


songs and crushes and sleepovers and snow

by quietmarvel



Category: Andi Mack (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, High School, Holidays, Kippen Siblings, M/M, holiday fluff but with a storyline, the kids are 16/17 years old, very gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-23 19:05:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17085983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietmarvel/pseuds/quietmarvel
Summary: TJ and Amber decide to invite the gang over for a sleepover the Friday before winter break. Chaos, confession, and cuddling follows. (or: I try to write cute moments and also a storyline.)





	1. beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Two parts, scattered cursing, and the characters are around 16/17 and in high school. I didn't exactly edit, but here you go!

“TJ! We’re going to be late!” Amber is already stepping out the door, coffee mug and jangling keys in hand and JanSport bag tossed over her shoulder.

“One second!” TJ calls back, then proceeds to make a ruckus searching for something in the living room. Their mother takes the opportunity to head to the door and give Amber an uncalled for kiss on the forehead and accidentally bop her on the cheek with the mug containing her breakfast.

“Oh, and guys, your dad and I are leaving Friday night to go up and visit Caden and Marissa—we’ll be back Sunday night or early Monday morning depending on which flight we can get. Are you guys okay with that?”

Amber is used to her parents being gone—when they’re fighting, when her dad takes way-too-long business trips, when either or both of them disappear without warning for a few days. But now that they’re on some kind of weird getting-along-hiatus, the fact that they’re going to Maine together as a husband-wife trip is a bit off-putting.

“Okay,” TJ responds uncaringly, pushing past their mother and Amber and then practically falling out the doorframe. Amber shrugs and follows him, the heels of her shoes clicking against the stone.

TJ jumps into the passenger seat, already typing something away on his phone—to Cyrus, no doubt. Amber throws her bag into the back seat, and in one smooth motion turns on the ignition, checks her mirrors, buckles her seatbelt, and grasps the wheel with one hand.

“Ugh.”  
“About sums it up,” TJ says, without looking up from his phone.

“One week of exams, though, and then we’re free.”

TJ blinks twice, then drops his phone. “Shit. I did not finish studying my Spanish vocab.” He scrambles around in his backpack and pulls out a thick multicolored packet of notes.

“Yeah, good luck with that.” Amber drops a piece of spearmint gum in her mouth and backs down the driveway, glancing at the rearview mirror. Once they’re into the road and headed towards school, she pops the gum once and settles back into the light traffic.

“Uh, lemon. Oh wait, it’s just, uh, limón? Okay. Um, grapefruit. La toronja.”  
“Hey Teej, are you going to Reed’s thing on Saturday night?”

TJ licks his lip and raises his eyebrows so all fourteen forehead lines are visible. “If I must.”

“Honestly it’s just going to be Reed trying to get everyone drunk and hook up with the nearest available guy. Or girl. And he has poor music taste.”

“You think everyone has poor music taste if they don’t stan Billie Eilish and King Princess.”  
“Valid. But seriously, we should just throw our own party. Mom and Dad’ll be gone anyway.”

“You want to throw a party. And have to clean up people’s drunken messes. And protect the at least eighteen breakable objects in every room.”  
“No…” Amber hard turns the steering wheel right toward the road their high school is on. “Actually. I don’t want to hang out with Reed and I certainly don’t want to hook up with him. He’s already got half of the duo down—“  
“Hey. Hey Amber. How much can I pay you never to bring that up again?”  
“Not all the money in the world. Okay. Well. What if we invited just a few people over? What if we—oh my god, what if we had like a group sleepover?” Amber grips the wheel and grins at the idea.

“With like…Andi?”

“With everyone! Oh! You should invite Cyrus!”

TJ’s face goes one shade darker than normal, and he flips over his phone in his hands. Amber still hasn’t officially been formally informed of TJ’s (massive) crush on Cyrus Goodman, but all of the evidence is there. She hasn’t started prodding him yet, but if he doesn’t tell her soon, she might have to. Then again, if she does try and pry the information from him, he may start asking about her crush, which was a bit of a sore subject.

“Um. Sure? Sure. Who else?”  
“Buffy, Andi, Jonah? Just the six of us?”

“A sleepover?” TJ gulps.

“Yup.”

“Um.”

It’s all he says, but Amber just smacks her gum and turns into the school, secure in the knowledge that her plans for this weekend are set.

 

—

 

After the exam, Cyrus spots TJ at his locker, fumbling with the lock. It’s a daily occurrence: TJ fails to get it open during lunch period, Cyrus helps, they talk. Sometimes TJ throws his arm around Cyrus’s shoulder as they walk off to lunch, because he’s brave. Cyrus just smiles and listens to his heartbeat speed up when that happens.

“Need some help with that?” Cyrus asks, striding up beside him.

“A little,” TJ admits, and Cyrus takes the lock in his hands. He counts fourteen to the right, then swings it back left, then finally hears the click.

“I guess hanging out with Jonah pays off. I should really teach you—“

“You should really teach me.“ TJ agrees, then grabs his books and shoves them in his backpack, already reaching an arm out to Cyrus. He drops his hand on Cyrus’s shoulder, giving an affectionate shove, and then the two of them step in stride to lunch. TJ doesn’t say much, but he keeps working his jaw like he’s got something to tell Cyrus. Finally, they reach the cafeteria, and TJ is still narrowing his eyes at the wall, as they sit down as if it will tell him what to do.

“Earth to TJ? Still up there?”

TJ snaps to attention. “Listen, I’ve got to ask you something. Amber is inviting a few friends over on Saturday for a holiday gathering thing instead of Reed’s big party. And me. I mean—I’m also having friends over. So, do you want to come?”

A grin takes over Cyrus’s features immediately. “You’re inviting me over?”

“Of course,” TJ says, unable to hold back a nervous smile.

“Who else is coming? And what are we going to do? I don’t mean to interrogate—well, actually, I do—but I’ve just never really gone to anyone’s house before, besides Buffy’s and Andi’s. And Jonah’s that one time, huh. But you’ve been to my house—“  
“Hey, Underdog.” Cyrus pauses at the nickname, always and forever a weak spot for him. “It’ll be alright. We’re going to watch movies, make cookies, you know, have fun. And you can sleepover if you want,” TJ finishes. Cyrus doesn’t know how TJ manages to say the word sleepover without blushing, because his own face warms when TJ says it.

“I’m in. Only if the cookies happen to be double chocolate chunk, though.”

“You got it, Underdog. And while you’re at it, can you invite Buffy and Andi?”

Cyrus pauses. “You want me to invite them?”

“Uh—yeah. I’ll invite Jonah, then, and that’s everybody.”

Two years ago, Buffy and Andi would have rather sunken several more canoes than spend a holiday weekend with the Kippens. But a lot has changed since middle school. Once TJ got his act together and apologized to Buffy, things started to fall into place. It was a rocky start, for sure, especially after an incident with TJ’s friend Reed and a gun. But slowly the girls started to accept TJ and even understand why Cyrus liked him so much. He was a much kinder person after a particularly bad episode of drama with his parents ended in the spring of their eighth grade year. And Amber came around too, apologizing for a couple months of mistakes. Buffy and Andi started hanging out with TJ and Amber more, and even Jonah got over his dislike of TJ to form a mostly sports-based friendship. Now the tentative bond between the six of them had grown into something unspoken—now three sophomores and three juniors, one set of twins, a best friend trio of three, and an always-changing scheme of couples. If the six of them hung out over break, the event would be a good chance to solidify the friendship—finally put the drama of the past behind them.

“Yeah, I’ll invite them,” Cyrus responds. As if on cue, Buffy and Andi arrive at the table, chattering away about their exam. TJ takes his milk carton and heads out to the parking lot, probably to find Jonah at his car.

“Cyrus!” Buffy slides in next to him, dropping her Spanish textbook on the table. “Can you help us figure out what the short answer for seven was supposed to be?”

“Whoa, Buffy. You know I can only handle one school related activity per day, and that was the exam. Besides, I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Me too?” Andi asks, and Cyrus nods.

“Amber and TJ invited us to hang out on Saturday night. A… sleepover,” he says the word with a dramatic emphasis, then glances at his plate of sloppy Joes, wishing for taters with which to perform theater.

“A sleepover?” Andi yelps, pressing her palms against the bench. “At the Kippens’?”  
“Yup,” Cyrus says proudly. “Us, the twins, and Jonah.”

“Jonah,” Buffy repeats, tugging at the scrunchy in her hair.

“The twins,” Andi says. “Amber.”

Cyrus mouths the word _obvious_ , but Andi and Buffy aren’t paying attention to him. After all, isn’t he just as obvious? A sleepover, with TJ. A _sleepover_ , with TJ.

He’s going to die of shock on Saturday. His _crush_. It doesn’t feel good to say that on the inside, like his stomach is going to squeeze itself out of him. If TJ were here, he would put a hand on Cyrus’s shoulder and Cyrus would be able to breathe, besides the gentle butterflies in his stomach. But the idea of a _sleepover_ —

“We’re going to lose our minds,” Buffy says, and Andi nods in agreement. Cyrus supposes that Andi has gotten used to the idea that Jonah is Buffy’s now, because she doesn’t even seem phased at Buffy’s reaction. What a strange world he’s living in, where Andi loses her mind over her ex-mortal enemy Amber Kippen while her best friend Buffy panics about her ex. Where TJ Kippen invites him, Cyrus Goodman, to have a _sleepover._

And make cookies and listen to Christmas songs and watch holiday movies— _romantic_ holidays movies, where they might lean against each other, one’s head on the other’s shoulder, and then fall asleep and wake up in the morning, still next to each other, hands nearly touching—

“Earth to Cyrus—“ The daydream ends with Andi grinning over him, waving her study materials for the history exam tomorrow. “You can think about TJ once you’re done thinking about Napoleon. Come on.”

Rolling his eyes, Cyrus follows Buffy and Andi to the library, still turning over the invitation in his mind and letting it sink in.

—a _sleepover—_

 

—

 

While Buffy drives Cyrus and then herself home, Andi bikes to her apartment alone, digging her wrists into the handlebars. Her head is full of mindless history terms, of European names and dates she’ll forget within twenty-four hours. But none of those words—manorialism, Medici, Columbian Exchange, or diaspora—are sticking to the forefront of her thoughts. No, those are occupied by Cyrus’s words from earlier. Amber had invited her—

Andi cut off her thinking right there. The proper line of thought was definitely that TJ had invited Cyrus and asked his friends to tag along. But still, the idea of Amber thinking of her to invite, of Amber going through her contacts and smiling when she got to Andi’s name: that thought made Andi smile uncontrollably while the wind blew in her face and eyes.

To quote ninth grade Cyrus: “—very gay, very smitten—“ That was exactly what she was.

One and a half years ago, in the June before freshman year, Andi had received a handwritten letter in the mail. It was five pages long, in sincere cursive with crossed i’s and dotted t’s. And it was from Amber: an apology. For the ferris wheel, the bracelet, the anger, the party, the everything. At the end she had written “ _I know I can’t make up for everything that I’ve done. But I hope you can start to forgive me, knowing that I want to make it better.”_ Andi had read it, and reread it, and tried to think of words to say in response. But there was nothing to say, only a relationship to rebuild. And so after Amber extended that olive branch, so had Andi. She had offered to hang out with Amber, just like they had months prior after her falling-out with Buffy, but this time Buffy came along to some of them, and they didn’t go to any more parties. Amber always seemed a little nervous when they went out, as if she was afraid of messing up again. It was strange to see that side of Amber, who wasn’t perfectly composed and certain. But both of them gradually opened up, and this time the friendship didn’t encroach on Andi and Buffy’s mended relationship, but prospered next to it.

December of ninth grade year—so, one year ago—Andi invited Amber over for a sleepover. And around two in the morning, as they were sprawled out on Andi’s bedroom floor, Andi had told Amber, finally, everything that happened with her family in seventh and eighth grade and how all of it felt as it was happening: finding out who were mom was, meeting her dad, Pops disappearing, Cece’s breakdown, her mom and Cece fighting, her parents’ marriage, and too many other situations to count. Amber had listened, and halfway through the story of her parents’ reuniting, had reached out a hand and taken Andi’s in her own. _Sorry_ , the gesture seemed to say, _for the things I said at that party two years ago._ _Sorry for not being there for you. Sorry that the world has never been on your side._

Once Andi finished, Amber had kept holding her hand and then had begun to tell a story of her own: a story of her and TJ, inseparable since birth, of parents who constantly fought in the kitchen, in the living room, in the car, everywhere. It was a story of pain and tears and therapy and late nights working and the twins holding onto each other. Every time Andi thinks about this story, she remembers the way Amber and TJ had lashed out at everyone around them for those years in their life. The story didn’t excuse their actions—and Amber knew that—but it qualified them. And it was still something they were going through, the nerve-wracking feeling of never knowing how able your family would be to cook dinner, when your dad was going to return from another continent, how you were supposed to survive with a variable number of parents.

That night, Andi and Amber had held hands for almost an hour, silent in the dark. It was just something unspoken.

And then, months later—in June of this year—Andi had come to a realization. A heart-stopping, eye-popping realization. It started with her approaching Cyrus hesitantly, and asking him: _how did you know you liked Jonah?_ The real meaning of the question felt implied to her—not Jonah, but boys—but Andi now thinks Cyrus must have missed the point. He thought she was asking about Jonah again, about dimples and frisbee. So Andi didn’t mention it again. She kept it rattling around in her mind until September, when Buffy told her, with a small, shaky voice, that she was bisexual.

Andi knew what it meant to be bisexual. To like girls and boys both. And the idea had seemed so freeing at first, but unreachable for her. But when Buffy shaped the word with her mouth, Andi felt something inside of her click. Bisexual. She thought about Jonah and Amber. She thought about Walker and Libby. She thought about the teen magazines she used to hide when Cece wasn’t looking and thumb through, looking for pictures of Miley Cyrus.

And then she thought: I am two hundred percent fucked.

She and Amber went ice skating; they watched movies together and had sleepovers and went shopping and people watched outside Shadyside College. They held hands in the dark, once.

But it wasn’t until September of tenth grade year that the feeling sunk in: more than a friendship, something unspoken. For Andi, at least.

And now—a sleepover! Not just an ordinary one. A sleepover with boys and food and movies and time to themselves. What if Amber liked one of the guys she had invited? That only left Jonah, which seemed unlikely. But there was no way Amber would ever like Andi back, because she was too perfect and way too heterosexual; she would never date Andi—

Those were the type of thoughts Cyrus always told her to keep out of her head. After her realization in September, she told both Cyrus and Buffy by the end of October. Cyrus tried to petition to change the ‘G’ in Good Hair Crew to ‘Gay,’ but Buffy said that Gay Hair Crew just sounded like a bad fanfic trope.

It was so nice to have them to rant to, because otherwise there would be no one to tell about Amber’s perfect outfits, her cuffed jeans and half-up hair, her demanding eyes and her phone calls. What if Amber admitted she liked someone else at the party? Would their close relationship end? Or would Amber just never see the things they did—hold hands, text for hours, compliment and blush and flirt—as romantic? Her mind kept going back and forth, pulling her in directions she didn’t want to go in. _She loves me not_ , _she loves me not even more, she hates me, she likes Jonah._

Still, Andi is excited. As she turns into the driveway, Ms. Mosby from the suite next door waves before returning to watering her plants in the windowsill. Cyrus will be happy too, she knows, because of TJ. And that leaves Buffy and Jonah, who are eternally friends, even through drama between Jonah and Andi, or Buffy and Walker, or anyone else. Andi and Amber… it had a nice ring to it. Maybe they could watch _To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before_ and bake heart shaped cookies. With the bisexual flag.

Well. She’s daydreaming again.

The point was: the sleepover should be fun, if she can manage to get through it without staring at Amber for too long.

“Andi! You're home!" Her mom's voice wakes her from her daydream, crisp and clear.

“Coming, Mom!” she calls back. Bisexual Andi can be left behind with her bike and hopeless crush and her overflowing excitement for the weekend.

 

—

 

“Hey, Jonah! Wait up!” Buffy calls, trying to pick up speed on her skateboard. It’s the morning of their second final, and Buffy has been left to fend for herself while Cyrus and Andi jointly finish last-minute Euro studying. Meanwhile, Jonah Beck is skating into school with just a pencil in his hand, strangely calm for a kid who called her at 10 the night before begging to review history.

“Buffy! How’s it going? How is Tuesday treating you?” Jonah skates to a stop and so does Buffy, a couple feet from the entrance to the school.

“Like shit,” Buffy admits, reaching into the back of her backpack. “History is just wrecking me.”

“I am absolutely sure you will do fine,” Jonah says. “When was the French Revolution?”

“I’m not answering that because it’s an embarrassment to my recently-in-the-past-24-hours acquired knowledge of everything that happened in Europe from 800 to 2000.”

“Fair enough,” Jonah responds, grinning with dimples. Buffy can’t help but smile back—because it’s Jonah, and he makes everyone smile. He made Andi smile when they dated and me made Cyrus smile and swoon at the same time. And Amber. And Libby. And Natalie. It hurts a little to know she’s not special, but Buffy knows Jonah has her back.

“Speaking of… um, I actually don’t have a good segue. But are you going to Amber’s on Saturday?”

“What?” Buffy says, shocked. “You’re coming?”

“Yeah?” Jonah says, looking a little offended. “Amber invited me.”

“Oh. TJ invited Cyrus who told us—um, when did Amber invite you?”  
“Sometime yesterday in the morning. Then TJ invited me too, at lunch.” He brushes a lock of hair out of his bright eyes, eyebrows drawn together.

“Cool. Um. Do you and Amber talk a lot, then?” Buffy asks. She can feel her heartbeat pounding a little faster than normal—weird.

“Not really. I mean we didn’t talk at all after I broke up with her, but that was a long time ago and we talk a lot more now than back then,” Jonah says. His eyebrows have settled but he still looks confused, the dimples gone.

“So you’re not together, or anything?” God, she is so stupid. Obvious. She’s denied it to herself for so long, but it’s coming out in her words right now: she likes Jonah. She must.

Stupid Jonah.

“What? No!” Jonah flips up his skateboard and gives a head tilt. “Amber would never, ever date me again. And I wouldn’t date her again either. We’re just awkward exes who are now in the same friend group. And we have the same French class, so she came up to ask a question before the exam and then asked me about the party.” All the words come out in a big hurry, as if he’s justifying something. And Buffy feels her chest fill with relief—annoying, unwanted relief—but relief all the same.

“Okay. I was just wondering—so can you come?”

“Of course! I can’t wait. And you?”

“I’ll be there, Jonah Beck,” Buffy responds, her mouth full of a smile. Jonah claps an arm around her shoulder and the two walk off towards the gym floor and the final, both smiling stupidly as they go.

Two hours later, when they finish the exam, Cyrus and Andi are still nowhere to be found. Buffy doesn’t mind, though; she and Jonah just wander aimlessly, in the general direction of the shops, discussing the test and the party and random other things. Eventually, Jonah seems to realize they should pick a destination and asks her: “Want to study for the math final?”

“Not at all, no,” Buffy says, popping gum between her teeth.

“It must be done,” Jonah admits, as he dips down from the skateboard to skim the ground.

“Whyyyy,” Buffy whines. She tucks a pesky piece of hair behind her ears. “Let’s just go to the Spoon and get food.”

It surprises even Buffy when she says it. The Spoon is somewhat of a sacred thing. It’s the Good Hair Crew’s place. It’s Jonah’s place too, but never as much as it has always been the Good Hair Crew’s. This feels like a date. It must be a date—is it?

“Sounds good, Slayer!” Jonahs sounds a little too much like middle school Jonah when he whips about the nickname, but Buffy doesn’t mind it. The name seems affectionate, like a secret between just the two of them.

“Baby taters and milkshakes it is,” Buffy declares, hopping back on her skateboard. “Race ya!” Jonah laughs an indignant laugh and then follows her on down the sidewalk, towards the blinking lights of the shops.

“You won’t beat me, Driscoll!” Jonah shouts, as the two speed into the distance, laughing and fading under the winter Shadyside light.

 

—

 

It’s been rough, but the Good Hair Crew and company has made it through four-about-to-be-five exams. Cyrus is tired out of his mind, especially from the exhaustion of the English exam on Thursday. Now they’ve just got a chemistry final, and they’re home free. Just one day until the group sleepover at TJ’s—Cyrus’s heart starts beating every time he starts to think about it. He’s asked his mother and stepfather seven times, just to make sure they approve. And—this may be the worst part—he didn’t exactly tell them girls would be sleeping over. Obviously, it wouldn’t make any difference for him. He sleeps over with Buffy and Andi all the time. But sometimes the idea of spending the night with someone of the opposite gender draws angry parents like flies to honey.

Cyrus can’t even imagine the panic if he told them that he liked TJ and was sleeping over at his house.

Then, stupidly, he starts to wonder if TJ cares that Buffy and Andi—girls—are sleeping over. It was a rough time back in 8th grade when he was hard-line convinced that TJ liked Buffy, that the apology and the uniforms and the kindness, especially to Cyrus, were all to win back Buffy after treating her like crap. Now, though, that seemed like a foolish assumption.

Almost as foolish as thinking that TJ’s crush could ever be Cyrus.

“Hey!” Andi’s shout interrupts his spiral of daydreaming. “What’s up, Cyrus? How are you?”

“Theoretically good, because that’s the standard answer. But also utterly and completely devoid of energy.”

“Mood,” Andi replies, leaning back over the chair she’s sitting in. “I just want to take this now and be done. Go home.”

“Sleep!” Even Buffy’s voice is scratchy and tired, attesting to the level of stress and exhaustion needed to finally take her energy.

All three let out a collective groan as the bell goes off, informing them to head to the gym floor. “I wanted to take the test,” Andi mumbles, “until I realized I actually had to take it.”  
They stumble to the floor and press pencils to paper, each still thinking about the sleepover in one way or another, wishing for something to come true.

After the exam, Cyrus’s writing hand is too in pain and his brain too delirious to celebrate. But he does find TJ, who is struggling with his locker for the last time this semester.

“TJ!” he calls out, already happy just to be around him. “We’re done!”

“We’re done, Underdog!” TJ cries out, tugging on his hoodie string and biting his lip. “No more homework!”

“Thank God,” Cyrus says, reaching out to input TJ’s combination.

“Muffin to celebrate?”  
“Chocolate chocolate chip?”

“Are there any other kinds?”

Cyrus laughs, amused by the string of questions. Then, he asks, “Where’s everyone else?”

“Is _everyone else_ getting a muffin? No, sir. Let’s go.” Again, TJ practically drags Cyrus, but this time to the cafeteria. Cyrus latches on, feeling rather like a barnacle, and attempts not to be run over by the increasingly flow of traffic down the hallway.

“Try not to get stampeded,” TJ advises, and Cyrus rolls his eyes. They end up in the lunchroom wearing matching grins: they seem to always congregate here—it is, after all, the first place they technically met.

TJ buys the muffin, and while he does, Cyrus stands beside him, lost in thought. Thinking about TJ, which has become the norm both when they are together and when they are not. Cyrus doesn’t know when it became _this much_ of a problem, but his smile… his eyes… his laugh…the way he shapes the word Cyrus in his mouth, like it’s alive with emotion and meaning.

He’s so far gone. It hurts even to walk close to him, their arms swinging ever closer, shoulder’s brushing. To have TJ throw his arm around him like it’s nothing. Because it is—to him. Cyrus knows with absolute certainty that TJ is the straightest human in history. Because that’s how the story goes. Why he wants to be friends with poor, sad, gay Cyrus is beyond anyone’s comprehension. It doesn’t add up, but Cyrus doesn’t care. Without his friendship with TJ, he would just be hopelessly pining over the possibly still jerky basketball team captain, which sounds like a bad high school movie.

And now this sleepover—because it’s not like he’s been thinking about it every moment between when TJ told him and now, and will continue to right up until he rings the Kippens’ front doorbell. It’s not as if they’ll probably have to share beds, and sit on couches, and be close in a proximity they never get at school. TJ has been to Cyrus’s house a few times, but this is different, Cyrus already knows. But then he can pair the other four people off in his mind, leaving just him and TJ—too far. Now he keeps replaying an image in his mind, where TJ sneaks one hand into Cyrus’s and squeezes it.

Too far—abort mission, abort—

“Let’s go!” TJ sing-songs, grabbing Cyrus’s arm and pulling him towards the parking lot. They reach the small lawn beside the school and sit down, watching the hoards of students finished with their exams exit and head to tired cars. TJ falls onto his stomach and props his head up in his hands, while Cyrus slowly peels the wrapper off the muffin and begins to favor each delicious bite.

“Mmm. Mhm. This is sooo good,” Cyrus proclaims, with a mouth full of chocolate. TJ grins and sticks a hand out: a request. Cyrus considers it, considers the muffin in his hand, then goes back to eating it himself.

“Por favor señor, tengo mucha hambre,” TJ implores, giving that pouty face Cyrus can never say no to: lips puckered, puppy-dog eyes, _head tilt._ Plus, there’s the Spanish…

While Cyrus breaks off a piece of the muffin, he desperately tries to shut down whatever part of his brain is generating these thoughts, but nothing works. It’s hopeless.

“So. TJ. Thoughts on when snow will show up? This weekend or later?”

“My money’s on later. Shadyside is never on time, especially not with these things. It’ll be sometime mid-January, with a light dusting followed by a couple storms.”  
“Interesting forecast: I guess we’ll see. Now, is Christmas at your house or grandparents?” This is a game Cyrus and TJ like to play, sometimes called: interrogation. They want to know things about the other’s lives but lack the tact to achieve this in a normal way. So rapid-fire questioning sometimes it must be.

“Grandparents. Always. But we did decorate really well this year—you’ll love it on Friday. I think my mom is trying to win the spot of best Christmas house from her mother-in-law.”

“And do you think she won?”

“If I told you the answer to that question, I would have to secretly commit a murder. Against you. That’s classified.”  
Cyrus rolls onto his back beside TJ, the grass itching through his shirt. “Whatever you say, Kippen.”  
“Last name?” TJ asks, glancing down, surprised.

“Last name,” Cyrus asserts. TJ bites his lips and grins, glancing off towards the school. He reaches out and breaks off another chunk of the muffin, then swallows it down.

“Goodman,” he mumbles, his mouth still stuffed with muffin crumbs. Cyrus rolls his eyes and gives TJ a little shove so he roles onto his side. Indignant, TJ rolls over and onto his knees more quickly than should be humanly possible, arms extended like he’s ready to fight. Then he returns Cyrus the favor with a shove that seems right out of some wrestling match. Scrambling to his feet, Cyrus reaches out and grabs TJ’s arm, pulling him in a wide circle. TJ stops the motion and takes Cyrus by both shoulders, fake accosting him. “Goodman,” he repeats, grinning this time.

Cyrus shakes free by dropping from under TJ’s grip. “Kippen!” he teases, reaching down to snatch the muffin and then hightail it for the parking lot, towards Buffy’s car and the Kippen-mobile.

“Take that back!” TJ calls, chasing after him. “And get away from the Kippen-mobile!”

“Fine, I’ll just take Charlotte.” Cyrus slides into the passenger seat of Buffy’s unlocked and previously named Toyota. He places the muffin remains on the console, locks the door, and crosses his arms.

“Cyrus,” TJ mouths, pouting again. Then he holds up his phone and purposely wipes through to Netflix, pointing to _Degrassi High: Next Class_ and the next episode button.

_Their_ show.

Cyrus unlocks the door as quickly as his fumbling hands will allow, and TJ slips into the passenger seat with his phone and earbuds. By the time Buffy finds her way back to the car, saying goodbye to Andi and Amber, TJ and Cyrus are leaning almost against each other across the console, the phone propped up between them and the episode playing on full volume. She just shakes her head and unlocks the car, startling Cyrus into slamming on the horn and then looking up to catch a knowing look from Buffy.

He just shakes his head in return, smiles at TJ as he leaves the car to go join Amber, and settles back in the passenger seat. And the moment that Buffy enters the car—

“Cyrus! That was so cute! Tell me EVERYTHING that happened. Go.”

 

—

 

Saturday morning, Andi rolls over in bed with a knot of nervousness in her stomach and a chill in her bones. The first thing has been constant since the moment when she found out about Amber’s sleepover. When she makes it to the window to glance out at the morning, the second thing gains its own explanation:

Snow.

Lots and lots of snow.

“Mom!”

Ten minutes later, Bowie, Bex, and Andi are all ankle deep in snow and breathless. The side yard of the apartment is glistening with powdery snow and frost, as a few brave cars squeak by on probably iced out streets. Andi’s pink knitted scarf scratches around her neck as she carefully shapes a snowball to toss at her dad. She eats ice when her mom hits her back in revenge and she tumbles onto the pavement, where she stays, making a snow angel.

“Andi! Invite your friends!” Bowie calls from across the yard

“I’m seeing them tonight!” she yells back, still making a snow angel.

“Doesn’t matter,” Bex responds, kneeling down next to her. “It’s a snow day! Tell them we’ll have pizza. Homemade pizza, since you couldn’t pay me to drive on the roads right now. Oh, tell them to walk! And be safe.”

Bex offers Andi a hand and then pulls her from the ground. They look at each other, in anticipation for a moment, before Andi’s smile catches on her face.

“Snow Cece?” they say at the exact same time. Bex bursts out laughing, then quickly straightens her face, mouths _sorry_ and runs over the corner to begin gathering snow.

“What in the world?” Bowie asks, shaking his head.

“It’s a Mack girls thing,” Andi proclaims, as Bex roles snow into a base. “Watch it and weep.”

By the time they’re done, Andi’s sides hurt from laughing and her mouth is red with cold. A solemn, stoic snow figurine of Cece Mack stands in the front yard, and a perplexed yet impressed Bowie stands by. Bex offers Andi a gloved high five as they admire their handiwork.

“Hot chocolate?” Bowie asks, smiling.

“Is that even a question?”

 

—

 

Cyrus has seen a lot of snow in his life. In Shadyside, at his grandparents’, in documentaries—but somehow, the first snow of the season always manages to transfix him. This year is no exception, and when Cyrus presses his chin to the window to see the tiny white flakes drifting to the ground, he can’t contain a smile. A wild, joyous smile—snow!

Moments later the phone is in his hand and he’s dialing the first and only person he can think of right now.

 

—

 

TJ wakes groggily, to the phone ringing. It’s only seven, but he rubs his eyes and sits up, glaring over at the phone. He’s gotten maybe—five hours of sleep? Crap. Not his intention. He supposes that the day after the last exam he has kind of an excuse to sleep in, which had been the plan. But apparently not, because of the evil phone. He reaches to pick it up, and sees—Cyrus!

Clearing his throat and trying to wake himself up, TJ leans back against the wall behind hid bed as he answers the call:

“TJ! TJ TJ TJ TJ!”

He pulls the phone from his ear and stares at it, not in shock, but with a strange smile. Then he slowly pushes it back between his shoulder and ear, trying to restrain a grin.

“Cyrus? Cyrus Cyrus Cyrus Cyrus?”  
“Did you see it?” TJ can picture Cyrus through the phone, his dark eyes open wide with glee and excitement.

“See what?”

“SNOW.”

On that, TJ nearly drops the phone and sprints to the window, ripping wide the curtain. And there it is, from rooftop to rooftop, doorstep to doorstep, on every car and stoop and front yard: glimmering white snow.

“Whoa.” is all he can whisper into the receiver.

“I know,” Cyrus whispers back. Then, a quick pause, and—“You should—come over? Yeah, do you want to come play in the snow?”

TJ can physically feel his heart squeeze at that. His parents are gone, so Amber and he are co-in charge. And the sleepover is tonight… TJ is grinning at the snow, one hand squeezing the fabric of his pajama shirt, right above his heart.

“Let me consult the one in charge… he says yes. I’ll be there in twenty.”  
“See you then,” Cyrus responds, excitedly.

“Bye,” TJ says, and it’s a whisper of a word. Across the line, the phone disconnects.

TJ just sits there for a second, phone resting on his shoulder, before pulling it against his chest and falling back onto his bed, smiling endlessly at the ceiling.

 

—

 

A couple streets away, Cyrus grins down at the phone as if it is the source of his luck. His cheeks are red and his ears shining from nervousness—did he just invite a boy to his house? But it doesn’t matter. He holds the phone tight in his hand, and only twenty minutes later does he put it down, still smiling the same smile.

 

—

 

Buffy falls asleep the night after exams around one in the morning, having just finished texting with Jonah. Her eyes are burned out and her brain fried, from exams and texting and stress, so she sleeps endlessly until the natural light wakes her up around ten.

The natural light and the stark reflection of something else on the outside of the window, glowing through the reflection.

Buffy doesn’t call Jonah when she sees the snow, but she texts him the snowflake emoji: it’s the language he speaks. Then she calls Cyrus and screams about it for a while with him. Then he rants about TJ, and Buffy listens and gives advice and praises him for inviting the boy of his dreams over for a casual snow day. And she keeps glancing over at Jonah’s returned smiley faces, wondering.

Andi calls her around eleven and asks her to come over. Obliging, Buffy slips on her winter coat and trudges to Andi’s in the brisk air. Once she gets there, Amber is already helping Andi make more snow angels in her front yard. Buffy feels a pang of something—jealousy? She doesn’t know, but she ignores it and lays down next to them. Amber grabs hands with both her and Andi and they trace out an interlocking chain of three girl paper snow dolls on the ground. Once they stand, Amber nods in approval.

“I can’t wait for tonight,’ Buffy expresses, and Amber grins warmly. It’s nothing like middle school Amber, nothing like the Amber Buffy had to protect Andi from. No, this Amber keeps giving Andi knowing looks, deep smiles, and kind eyes.

It’s strange, maybe, to see Amber like this. But who is she to judge?

The three of the eat pizza and drink hot cocoa until Buffy and Amber each have to go home, saying goodbyes and promises to see the others in a couple hours. Buffy can’t stop thinking about Jonah, about how much he must be loving the snow with his younger siblings. She almost calls him several times, but stops herself before she picks up the phone. She sits in the living room with her mom instead, in silence. Shuffling and dealing out the solitaire cards, Buffy keeps glancing over at where her mom is flipping through the same magazine pages. She knows her mother is stressed out, and she knows she’s been hanging around her friends more than her mom lately. But Buffy doesn’t know how to fix their relationship that isn’t broken—just skewed. She keeps shuffling the deck. Her mother’s silence is a story for another time.

 

—

 

TJ’s heart finally stops racing when he and Cyrus collapse in front of the fireplace, panting. Their snow things are hung to dry along the grate, soaked from snowball fights and snow angels. TJ’s hair is sticky against his forehead—they’ve been out in the sun and snow for a couple hours, playing and talking and laughing. Cyrus too, looks worn out, but happy.

“I’ve never done so much exercise in my life,” Cyrus breathes out.

“Next time, I’ll take you downhill skiing in Colorado—“

“That’s enough,” Cyrus cuts in, grinning. “Moving metal torpedoes are way past my limitations.”

“Metal torpe—Cyrus, do you know what skis are?”

“Let me just stop you there,” Cyrus says. “Have you seen the skiers in the Olympics?”

“Oh, they’re so awesome! Lindsey Vonn, am I right? Oh—oh my god, he’s not a skier, but Shaun White! He kind of looks like Bowie, or he did before he cut his hair.” TJ stops, seeming to realize the beginnings of a rant coming from his mouth. Cyrus just smiles on at him, encouragingly.

“I just love the Olympics,” TJ admits, embarrassed. He’s looking at Cyrus for approval, but he can’t see anything in Cyrus’s eyes, so he shuts up.

“Hey,” Cyrus says, “I want to know more about the Olympics.” He reaches a hand across and places it next to TJ’s on the armrest. TJ doesn’t miss the quick glance towards the kitchen, to see if his parents are there and watching. His heart skips a beat as Cyrus smiles at him. “Tell me about it.”

“Well,” TJ inhales, flipping through several skiers in his mind before finally settling on one. “There’s Ted Ligety, and he’s really good—“

—

 

The moments are ticking away until six—the designated time for everyone to arrive at the Kippens’. Amber sits down in the kitchen, scrolling through instagram, always seeming to find her way back to Andi’s page. She glances down at the photos: of Buffy and Cyrus sitting on a counter, legs swinging, of Bex and Bowie joining hands and spinning in circles, of Andi with her arms around Jonah at the Spoon, a year and a half ago. The most recent addition is a picture of Amber in a flower crown, at the canoe lake where they hung out a couple times in the fall. She flips to the second photo, which is of Andi smiling at her. The caption reads: _first time for everything._

Amber locks the phone and squeezes it against her chest, hoping.

TJ came home from Cyrus’s around twelve, and the two had shared a solemn lunch, TJ still high off going to Cyrus’s house and Amber nervously thinking about the night.

She doesn’t know why she’s nervous. She’s slept over at Andi’s before; she saw Andi this morning. She hangs out with all of these people all the time.

And yet.

At six, the doorbell rings, and it begins.

First, Jonah. He’s dragging a massive pillowcase stuffed with pajamas and clothes, and he looks very pleased with himself. TJ shows him downstairs while Amber opens the door to Cyrus, who greets her with a hug. Next is Buffy, who stares in poorly hidden wonder at the Kippens’ foyer as she swings her keys around her thumb, and then Andi, riding her scooter—a scooter!—up the driveway.

“Hey Amber,” she says, smirking. Amber could faint.

“I hope you’re ready to help me bake.”  
“Cookies!?” Andi nearly shouts, scrambling in the door. Amber nods decisively, and Andi follows her downstairs to where everyone else sits. Cyrus is telling Buffy an animated story with her hands, and TJ and Jonah are playing a reluctant game of ping-pong.

“Children! Announcement!” Amber calls. “Your mother and I are setting up things for making dinner. If you want food, come up in twenty minutes.”

“Booo! Andi’s not our mother!” Buffy shouts back, then gives Cyrus a high five. Amber just rolls her eyes, then drags Andi back upstairs.

“Hooligans,” Andi says.

“Hooligans,” Amber agrees. She thinks: _we’re their gay mothers._ And then she slaps herself mentally for thinking it.

While the slap of the ping-pong ball continues below, Amber and Andi gather up a hodge podge of things for dinner: first, there’s peanut butter and jelly, with some bread. Amber pulls out a fruit salad her mother made a few days ago and drops it on the counter. Andi offers a bottle of mustard, for the sandwiches, but Amber stares her down until she puts it back.

“Hot chocolate?” Andi asks, and Amber nods vigorously. She pulls the Swiss Miss packets down from the cabinet and hands then to Andi, who scatters them across the counter. Then the two of them both quickly gather the ingredients needed for the cookies.

“Hmm. We need Starbucks,” Amber decides, considering their provisions.

“Let me go ask Buffy,” Andi says. Moments later, Buffy appears at the top of the stairs, dragging TJ with her.

“We’re going to Starbucks! Text TJ what you want,” Buffy calls and then disappears out the door.

“If any one of them ordered a pink drink, I swear,” Amber says to Andi.

“Cyrus. Cyrus did.”

“I have no response.” Amber holds out a hand for the spoon, which Andi hands over. Their knuckles brush over the wooden handle and Amber tries to keep a small sigh from escaping her mouth. Being around Andi—her creativity, her witty remarks, her bright, amazing presence—it’s all too much. Touching her is beyond the limit.

Amber wonders, vaguely, how she managed to survive the time they held hands for an entire night.

“Hey.” It’s Andi, glancing down at the batter. “You know what we should do?”

Amber stops stirring. “What?”  
“Pink cookies. Or purple ones? Do you have icing?”  
“Does TJ like to play basketball? Yes.” Amber returns to stirring the mixture, turning over Andi’s words in her mind. She imagines painting a bisexual flag onto a cookie. And then eating it. Just a little strange. And then another idea comes into her head.

“No eggs—do you want to try some?” Amber lifts a small spoonful of batter from the bowl and offers it to Andi.

Andi stops. “Cece would never let me. Mom would join in. Where do I fall?”

“Oh, come on. It’s gooooood…’

“Fine, you got me.” Andi snatches the spoon and licks the dough straight from it, then sighs in delight. “Almost as good as Mom’s wedding cake.”

“Almost?” Amber seizes the spoon back and thrusts it into the bowl. “I assure you, these cookies will blow Rebecca’s out of the water.”

“Rebecca?!” Glancing around, Andi grabs and second wooden spoon and holds it in front of her like a fencing sword. “I must defend my mom’s honor. And the name Bex.”  
“If that is how it must be, then so be it,” Amber counters, licking the rest of the batter from the spoon and then raising it to meet Andi’s. Her insides are swelling with happiness, just: all of it. Andi’s flushed cheeks, her parted bangs and wide smile. _She’s so beautiful_ , Amber has time to think, before Andi violently cuts into her thoughts with a swing of the spoon. _A warrior princess_ —oh, fuck—Amber evades her second strike and then wildly swings her weapon to meet Andi’s.

“You’ll never defeat me!” Andi brandishes the spoon and a grin, circling around so Amber is trapped against the counter

“Wanna bet?” Amber smacks Andi’s spoon from her hand and drops to a kneel to catch it, spin on her heel and switch places with Andi. Now Amber has the high ground, gripping the two spoons, while Andi places her wrists against the counter. Andi gulps.

“Um.”

“Smooth move, right?” Amber asks softly. Her heartbeat is hammering in her chest, but she keeps her eyes on Andi.

Andi’s dark eyes lock on Amber’s. “Very.” And Amber can hear Andi’s breathing, syncing with her own.

“Andi—“ she starts to say, because she can, and Andi is _right there_ , in her house, with cookie dough smeared at the corner of her lips and a softness in her eyes.

And then the basement door opens.

“Hey Amber, Cyrus and I are—“

Jonah cuts short, and Amber swears in her mind, then swings around. “Yes?”  
“We’re. Um. We’re going to set up the sleeping bags and all. Where are the blankets and pillow?”

“Downstairs, in the closet next to the storage room. Bottom shelf.” Amber flips the spoon in her right hand around several times, while Jonah scrambles back downstairs. When she turns back around, Andi has turned away, back to the batter. “Right,” she says. “On with it.” Andi nods.

They finish the dough and put the cookies in the oven, then call Jonah and Cyrus up for dinner. A couple minutes later Buffy and TJ burst in the door, balancing six Starbucks cups precariously between them. Dinner is fun, and delicious, and Amber loves every second of it, but the whole time her brain keeps flashing back. _What if?_ What if Jonah hadn’t walked in? What would Amber had said? She knows what she wanted to say. But she has no idea if those words would have actually come out.

It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s not like Andi wants to hear them.

 

—

 

Dinner, Cyrus would say—is a disaster.

Not that Amber and Andi didn’t put every scrap of effort they had into it. They did. But there’s the issue of where to sit. First, it’s just him and Jonah: across from each other. But when Buffy and TJ return, Buffy and TJ both go to sit by Cyrus. They pause, and Andi, who is finally sitting down takes the seat instead. So Buffy goes to sit across from Amber, and TJ sits next to Jonah, across from Andi. A little too far away.

“Cyrus,” Amber addresses him, “could you pass the fruit salad?”

“Please,” Jonah reprimands, and everyone looks up to glare at him.  
“Please,” Amber amends, and then throws a napkin at Jonah.

Cyrus passes the bowl, then glances over at TJ, who does the thing where he looks away from Cyrus as quickly as possible. Whenever it happens, Cyrus loses a little breath, because it makes him think TJ is looking at him. Makes him think TJ wants to be looking at him—and that is an ecstatic feeling to have.

“What movie are we watching?” Cyrus asks, mostly to TJ. But Jonah responds, all too soon:  
“Home Alone.” At least he’s chosen a good movie. In fact, that movie happens to be—

“Home Alone??” Buffy shrieks, standing up from her seat. “Only the best holiday movie ever made? Jonah, you like Home Alone?!”

“Of course,” he responds, looking up at her with a sort of awe. TJ makes eye contact with Cyrus across the table and gives a little eye roll, but it’s kind. Cyrus imagines he’s giving a sort of fond _“those heteros”_ remark. That sentiment, of course, would require TJ to be not hetero himself, a fact which Cyrus knows cannot be true.

Once, Buffy pointed out to him that TJ had never dated anybody. Not like the rest of the boys basketball team, who all seemed to have “forever girls” they always came back to. Not even like Cyrus, who had technically dated (and kissed!) a girl in middle school.

But Cyrus knew TJ must be straight, because that was the type of person he was. Never mind the glances when he thought Cyrus couldn’t see, the deep talks, the almost-brushing hands every time they walked close together.

See, this is why wishful thinking belongs in the trash can.

Buffy and Jonah keep talking, basically over the rest of the table, and Cyrus carries on a silent conversation across the table with TJ, mainly with his eyes: _You like the dinner? How could I not like PB and J? Just checking. What about the Starbucks? What about_ your _Starbucks? Was it worth the twelve dollars you paid for it? Are you done with dinner? I can’t wait to watch the movie. I’m still so tired from this morning. Me too. Can’t wait to get no sleep tonight._

And then Andi cuts in, and the conversation ends.

“The cookies are, ahem, ready.”

“Cookies!?” TJ stands up and stares at the oven, then glances rapidly over at Amber. “Sugar cookies?”

“With cinnamon,” Amber and TJ say at the exact same time.

“Grandma.” TJ melts into the word and stares longingly at the oven, then down to Cyrus and Amber. “Amber, you shouldn’t have.”

“TJ, it’s her birthday in a week.”

“Remind me—we have to get flowers on Thursday.”

“Do you think—“ Amber hesitates. “Do you think we should bring her some of the cookies too?”  
Cyrus knows they’re talking about their grandma on their mom’s side, who passed away several years ago. He keep quiet, watching they’re tear-free but emotion-filled exchange.

“I think she’d want us to eat them all, don’t you?”  
“I hate that you’re right. Oh well, let’s do this.” Andi runs to the oven, turns it off, and removes the cookies, which smoke and curl with heat. TJ scrambles over and takes one from the tray, and Andi attempts to smack his hand. “Cooling rack!”

“It’s fine,” TJ says, and his mouth is full of crisp, burning cookie. He takes a second bite and stops. And that’s when Cyrus sees the tears starting to form in his eyes.

“TJ,” Cyrus says. TJ meets his eyes, and comes to take Andi’s seat beside him. Talking ensues as everyone else runs over to grab cookies, but Cyrus keeps his eyes on TJ. “TJ, do you want to talk about it?” What Cyrus really wants to do is to take TJ’s hand in his own, to rub circles in TJ’s palm with his hand. But he doesn’t, he just looks on. And tries to help.

“I’m okay,” TJ says, then sniffles. “Really, The cookies just took me by surprise. But I’m really excited for Home Alone.”  
“Duh! Me too,” Cyrus says. TJ wipes his eye and grins back.

“Maybe this time the burglars will get away.”

“Yeah, and maybe you’ll go to sleep before 2am. Nope. Not happening.”

“Heyyy,” TJ protests. “I went to bed at 11 before exams. Progress.”

Cyrus just shakes his head, the happiness permanent on his face.

 

—

They’re all sipping on Starbucks orders and sitting on the couch downstairs, with the plate of still-warm cookies resting on the table between them. Jonah clicks on the movie, and a chorus of gasps goes around the rooms; there’s just something about _Home Alone._ Something about the movie’s inherent magic.

Jonah is sitting next to Buffy, with an inch or two of space between them. There’s a tiny voice in his head saying: _close the gap. Put your arm around her_. But the voice that is winning out says: _this never works out. Girls like you superficially, and that’s it._

That’s all it ever seems to be. And here’s the thing: Jonah falls. Hard. Middle school him was veritably in love with Andi, and there was nothing he could do about it. Before that was Amber, Libby for a bit in between, then Kira last year—Buffy had always been there, but Jonah had been too busy being head over heels to notice.

He regrets that, and he doesn’t.

Kira, though. Kira had been a whirlwind. She was strong and took no shit from anyone and it drove Buffy insane when they were together. Halloween last year, at Andi’s house, had been a certified disaster. Kira and Buffy nipping at each other, Jonah still uncomfortable around Andi, and Cyrus just trying to mitigate the drama while simultaneously texting TJ the whole time.

He misses Kira. He does, but Buffy is the one he wants to put his arm around, not anyone else. Buffy, with the skateboard and the curly hair and kindness and attitude and towering intelligence and recklessness.

“Jonah,” Buffy says to the left of him. Her voice is nearly in his ear—that close!

“Yeah?” he whispers back.

“I think we might be fifth and sixth wheeling.” Buffy nods in the direction of Andi, who is leaning her head on Amber’s shoulder, and Cyrus and TJ, who are sitting so close they might as well be on top of each other.

“You know,” Jonah says, turning his head so he’s looking directly at Buffy. “I kind of hate that term, anyway. If we’re the fifth and sixth wheels, then aren’t we just as valid as the other ones? Keeping the bus from running off the road.”

“You nerd,” Buffy says, but she’s smiling. “But seriously—do you see it? With all of them?”

Jonah hasn’t considered Amber and Andi before, but then again he hadn’t considered TJ and Cyrus until Andi and Buffy slapped down a typed list of evidence they had compiled for what they called “Tyrus.”

“I see it,” he says, after a pause. Across the room, TJ laughs at something and gives Cyrus a little shove, who smiles back at him.

“Watch the movie, fools!” Buffy whisper-yells across the room. The four of them look up like deer caught in headlights, and Jonah grins.

“I think we may be right.”

“Thanks, Detective Beck.”

“Always a pleasure to serve.” Jonah leans his head against the couch back. “Can I try some of your coffee?”

“Not unless you want to get seriously ill,” Buffy states, eyebrows sharp.

Jonah snaps his neck up and leans to the right about five feet. “You’re seriously ill?”  
“Merely a test. But seriously. Drink sharing is gross.” Buffy shoves her coffee cup away from Jonah, giving him a pointed look.

“No, you’re gross. Please???” Buffy looks offended, and turns around to grab the pillow from behind her. She swings it in his general direction, and Jonah catches it, affronted.  
“Pillow fight? That is so not docious magocious.”  
“Aha!” Buffy cries out, scrambling to stand up on the couch. “Endangering situations make you revert back to your middle school self. Hypothesis, confirmed! Theory, proven!”

“What the fuck?” TJ had the nerve to call out. Buffy shushes him and kicks a pillow over at him and Cyrus.

“Come down, fair maiden,” Jonah entreats from the couch below. “The film is not yet finished.”

Buffy rolls her eyes and jumps back down to the couch. “Good _sir,_ ” she responds, with an odd emphasis, “thou has distracted me from my favorite film of all eternity.”

“I reciprocate that sentiment,” Jonah says, and turns to eye the movie.

“Settle down, Romeo and Juliet!” Andi yells. Amber grins, and Cyrus leans across TJ to give Andi a fist bump.

“Wherefore out thou, another pillow-shaped projectile?” Buffy growls.

“Actually, wherefore means why…” Jonah cuts in. And when Buffy grabs a pillow from the ground and chucks it at him, he catches it, grinning stupidly.

Because Buffy really is the _one_. Not just a silly crush, or a middle school infatuation.

Veritably, truly, with one hundred percent certainty. The one.

 

—

 

TJ spends the movie with his breath held inside his throat. After Jonah and Buffy settle down, and Amber and Andi snuggle into each other, he leans back, shoulder pressed against Cyrus’s. And he stops breathing.

“Best part,” Cyrus whispers, when Kevin starts to weaponize his house. And TJ nods in agreement, keeping his eyes on the tv, because if he looks over at Cyrus, he’ll lose his mind.

Their legs and sides are touching underneath the blanket, and TJ’s left hand is thrown awkwardly across his lap; if it were laying naturally, it would be in Cyrus’s. So it goes. TJ is still a little shaken from the cookies—the cinnamon cookies which are, currently, sitting two feet away from him on the coffee table. But Cyrus made it better—Cyrus, who TJ tells everything, about his grandma and his family situation and how uncomfortable it makes him to cry, Cyrus, who always listens, when TJ’s brain felt broken or when he tore his ACL in ninth grade and couldn’t play basketball for months. Cyrus, who is now sitting less than an inch away from him. Less than a centimeter.

God, he’s so far gone.

When Cyrus smiles, TJ’s composure flies out the window. Because—Cyrus! “An angel,” Andi once described him as. Cyrus _saved_ TJ, and he does again and again every day. Cyrus makes him want to be better. What’s that quote? You make yourself better because of your soulmate, and the person you want to be for them? Soulmate. It’s a strong word, but it’s a weak word, because Cyrus means everything to TJ. Cyrus is worth a poetic rant—he’s worth all of them. Cyrus is the sun and the stars and the sky.

Cyrus is grinning softly at the tv, while Kevin McAllister prepares to give two grown men exactly what’s coming for them, while bells and Christmas music ring in the background.

Before TJ can stop himself, he picks up his left hand. And he inches it, breath by breath, toward Cyrus’s hand. His brain says _stop._ His brain says _keep going_.

TJ inhales, and he slowly, delicately, as if the weight of the world rests on this moment, brushes his pinky finger against Cyrus’s.

Cyrus’s breath hitches, just for one split second. TJ feels every doubt, every fear and frustration and scary thought, rush into his head. He half-closes his eyes.

And then Cyrus’s pinky finger pushes back against TJ’s.

Their hands are underneath the blanket, but TJ still feels like everyone in the room can see it. His face is flushed red, and so is Cyrus’s. But it’s dark, and the other four people in the room aren’t paying any attention to them, just each other.

TJ hooks his finger around Cyrus’s. And it’s Cyrus who pushes his palm against TJ’s, with caution and care and a trembling hand. Their hands meet under the blanket, and TJ locks his fingers with Cyrus’s.

On screen, Kevin’s paint cans inflict permanent brain damage on Harry and Marv. Cyrus’s palm is warm. And their hands fit together.

Only then does TJ start to breathe.

 

—

 

“Lights up, ladies and gents! We’re decorating!” Amber’s voice cuts into the silence and darkness the movie has devolved into. TJ and Cyrus split apart, and Buffy rubs her half-asleep eyes.

“Decorating?” TJ mumbles, stumbling to his feet.

“Garlands, people. Lights. Snowflakes.” Amber runs to the light switch and aggressively turns it on. “TJ?!”

“Reporting for duty,” TJ says, still sounding like he’s just woken up.

“This is what happens when you go to bed at 2 am, people,” Amber announces. Cyrus giggles, then glances over at TJ.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get a rush of energy sometime past eleven. Be prepared,” TJ supplies. “Where are the decorations?”

“Mom’s closet. The bin behind her old knitting stuff.”

“Right. Jonah, want to come help?” TJ asks, surprising everyone in the room, including himself.

“‘Course,” Jonah says, after only a small hesitation. He follows Jonah upstairs, and Andi stares after them, amazed.

“Imagine that happening two years ago,” Andi says.

“It never would have,” Cyrus decides.

“Hey Amber, can we get some music in this basement?” Buffy’s tired voice drawls from over in the kitchenette area, and Amber runs over to join her.

“Yes. Yes yes and yes.” She connects her phone to the bluetooth, scrolling frantically through endless Spotify playlists, then settles on one. First static, then clear lyrics come from the speakers.

The first song: _Youth_ by Troye Sivan.

Cyrus nudges Andi, who nudges him right back, while Buffy takes it upon herself to distract Amber. Andi, who is staring at Amber in wonder and disbelief, grabs Cyrus’s hand slowly, then starts to jump up and down, and dance.

“Yes Andi! Get it!” Amber runs around from inside the corner and takes Andi’s other hand, so they make a hazy half circle. Then Buffy runs to her sleepover bag, unzips it, and removes a silvery hairbrush.

_“What if, what if we lost our minds? What if we let them fall behind and they're never found?”_ Buffy sings into the hairbrush, gesturing with her hands.

Jonah and TJ, jogging down the stairs with a bin of decorations, join in with the singing, and TJ’s loud and clear voice cuts across the room: _“And when the lights start flashing like a photo booth, and the stars exploding, we’ll be fireproof…”_

_“MY YOUTH!”_ Andi shouts, _“My youth is yours, trippin’ on skies, sipping waterfalls. My youth.”_ And now she’s looking over at Buffy and Cyrus, the Good Hair Crew, the people who have mattered since the beginning and always will.

_“My youth is_ yours,” Cyrus calls back, running over to Buffy and sharing the microphone-hairbrush with her.

“ _Runaway now and forevermore,”_ Jonah finishes, his voice clear and beautiful. Buffy wrenches the hairbrush from Cyrus to look over at Jonah: longing, longing, longing.

_“My youth, my youth, my youth,”_ Cyrus and TJ harmonize, and then everyone shouts the ending to the chorus, jumping and vibrating with energy. The walls are shaking, and it’s nothing like Reed’s party but it’s more. It’s better.

Amber grabs Andi’s hand and they dance together through the next verse, smiling like the world is new. TJ offers a hand to Buffy, who accepts, only to be spun around in a circle. She takes her hand away, smirking at TJ.

“Didn’t see that coming, did you, Driscoll?” TJ asks, a challenge. Buffy just looks past him to Cyrus and mouths: _control your man._ Cyrus laughs, and, boldly, grabs TJ’s hand.

_“And when the lights start flashing like a photo booth, and the stars exploding, we’ll be fireproof,”_ they all sing again.

_“MY YOUTH!”_ Jonah explodes this time, playing an imaginary guitar and jumping up and down like he’s at a concert.

“… _Is yours,”_ Andi finishes, looking directly at Amber. And they’re all spinning, screaming, alive, through that chorus and the next.

It’s Amber who remembers the box of decorations, and, as the song is fading out, reaches in to grab a strand of garland.  
“Time to make this place a winter wonderland,” she says, as Troye’s voice fades out.

“You’re on,” TJ, responds, as if it’s a challenge.

“Decorating teams!” Amber declares. “Andi and me, TJ and Cyrus, Jonah and Buffy. GO!”

Before any of that can register, the first notes of the next song click across the radio, and Andi recognizes it immediately, again: _Molecules,_ Hayley Kiyoko.

Dang. It’s really just gay Friday today. Andi nearly slaps herself for thinking those words, but: they’re valid.

_“Pillars of my heart, everything got shattered in the dark. Tried to be evolved. Does it really matter at all?”_ Andi sings, softly, as she takes the other end of the garland and strings it up with Amber’s help.

The guys don’t seem to know the words, but all three girls certainly do, and they sing them loud. When Buffy sings, “ _So what should I do? All that’s left is molecules of you,”_ Jonah glances over, understanding. Buffy is singing about someone else, a person who used to matter and always will but is left to the wind and dust. A person who can’t always have a place in her heart because now they’re someone new.

And Jonah understands.

_“I’ve lost you…_ ” Amber croons. Cyrus runs to the decorations box and pulls out several glittery stars, which he tosses to TJ. Meanwhile, Buffy and Jonah tag team on a string of snowflakes, which they hang from the ceiling, bouncing to the beat of the song.

“ _Na, na, na, na, na ,na,”_ TJ mumbles under his breath, taping stars to the walls.

The song goes on, and decorations go up: stars and glitter and garlands and snow.

_“Does it really matter at all_?” Andi sings as she strings up another garland. She thinks: _should I just be numb? Just enjoy all of this, and ignore the fact that I like Amber? Or should that always be what’s on my mind? Do I even have a choice?_

The song finishes, and the room is full of glowing winter energy. Amber nods in satisfaction, but then seems to remember something. Just as she does, Cyrus lets out a shriek, recognizing the next song on the playlist.

“ _Back to the streets where we began, feeling as good as lovers can, you know…”_ the speaker announces.

_“Well, now we’re feeling so good!”_ Buffy and Cyrus finish at the same time.

“Guys,” Amber whispers, as the next stanza plays. And she throws a pile of fairy lights into the center of the room. Cyrus shrieks again.

“ _Into a place where thoughts can bloom, into a room where it’s nine in the afternoon,”_ TJ sings along, dragging a strand of lights to the outlet and placing them up along the wall.

The rest of them hang up the lights, filling the whole room with dull pinpoints in the stark basement light, until Amber scrambles to the wall and flips the switch.

As the lights go out, leaving just glowing fairy bulbs lighting the room, the lyrics continue to play, matching up: “ _Your eyes are the size of the moon. You could ‘cause you can, so you do_. _We’re feeling so good, just the way that we do, when it’s nine in the afternoon.”_

It’s only fairy lights, and it’s only the harmonizing voices of the six of them and Brendon Urie. Amber leans on Andi, and they gaze around at their handiwork. TJ and Cyrus nearly hold hands: once, twice, but, as usual they nearly miss every time. And Buffy is riding piggyback on Jonah’s back, arms extended, attempting to tape a glowing star to the ceiling.

It’s just them, as the snow dusts down outside the Kippen basement.

It’s perfect.

Two minutes later, when the song ends, and the lights are still off, Amber takes a knife to the suspended perfection, blue eyes pointed and purposeful as she glances around the room and says to her audience of five:

“Time for spin the bottle?”


	2. endings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yay- part 2! Again, scattered cursing, and the kids are aged up to 16/17. Enjoy!

Jonah, for his part, manages to keep Buffy on his shoulders without causing her to fall the five feet seven inches onto the carpet. His mouth falls agape, though, as he stares at Amber.

“Spin the _bottle_?”

Andi leans a little more on Amber, laughs nervously, then laughs with more certainty. “No, spin the baby tater. Of course spin the bottle!” Cyrus gives her a worried look, putting a noticeable space between himself and TJ, who runs to the lights and flicks them back on.

Buffy offers no comment, just taps Jonah’s shoulder so she’ll let him down. Then she accidentally bumps shoulders with him as they stumble over to the couch and sit down next to each other. Jonah feels the nerves on his skin stand up at the wisp of contact: a quiet shock.

Still stepping around fairy lights, Andi whispers something furtively to Amber, who bites her lip and shrugs. Then, regaining her composure, she smiles and runs back over to the couch.

“Who has a bottle? A water bottle—uh, Buffy? You’re a runner.”

Buffy raises her eyebrows but pulls a water bottle from seemingly out of nowhere with no visible reluctance. It’s silvery and dented and clearly not meant for playing spin the bottle in basements, but then again they’re not exactly meant for this either. Jonah glances around the room, and tallies: TJ has never dated anyone, Cyrus and TJ probably like each other, Buffy hasn’t dated anyone except Marty, Amber doesn’t seem to date anymore, as a rule, Andi had Walker and Jonah and then no one else every again, and Jonah—

It occurs to Jonah that he’s dated the most people out of everyone in this room. And that he’s kissed not one, but three girls.

It also occurs to him that the first and only girl who has made him understand the expression _butterflies in your stomach_ is sitting in this room. Next to him. Holding a bottle.

“Okay!” Amber shouts, snatching the bottle from Buffy and depositing it on the coffee table in front of the couch. Cyrus hastily picks up the remnants of the cinnamon cookies, glancing at TJ, then chucks them in the corner. Neither of the Kippens comment, and Amber continues speaking. “So….” she sighs. “We should probably not do the lips, considering only, what—two?—of the people in this room have had their first kiss?”

Eyes flash to Jonah, and to Andi. Jonah feels Buffy watching him from his left, but he doesn’t react. He meets Andi’s eyes across the couch, who is grinning sheepishly. They’ve talked about it—awkwardly—before: how they’re first kiss was in middle school, and strangely spontaneous, and in plain view of several other people.

Jonah remembers another kiss—then winces at the memory. It was his last kiss with Kira, under fluorescent roller skating lights. Two weeks later Jonah’s stray physics homework and skateboard stickers had been evicted from Kira’s house, and Jonah was no longer welcome at the Jefferson high school girls basketball games. Buffy had consoled him, which had always felt like a big thing: Buffy choosing Jonah over Kira. But maybe she wasn’t, because Kira and Buffy still kept their tentative, basketball-centric, passive-aggressive friendship around.

Maybe it didn’t matter. Jonah wanted his slate to be wiped clean. He wanted to be like Amber or Cyrus tonight, never having kissed someone and still dying to find out. He wanted—

Like a pesky firefly, a thought pricked at his mind: he wanted Buffy to have been his first.

But this is what he gets, tonight. Buffy leans a little into him, still shaping a smile at Andi: her best friend. Then, finally, she speaks:

“If two people spin each other twice, seven minutes in heaven.”

Amber lets out a scream of excitement, twisting in her seat. “Perfect—wait, one more thing.” She jumps from the couch and hurries back to the light switch, flipping it and leaving the room in suspended darkness, pinpointed with various strings of light. There’s enough light to see the faces of each person sitting around the couch, in this order: Jonah, Buffy, Amber, Andi, Cyrus, TJ.

“I better not spin you, Driscoll,” TJ says jokingly, in a way that says he asking for forgiveness, for the tenth or twentieth or fiftieth time. Part of Jonah wants TJ to say something to him with the same look in his eyes, because Jonah is sick and tired of wanting move on from middle school things—it’s why he went with TJ to get the decorations, it’s why he likes to spend time around Buffy and TJ together: because they’re all forgiving each other, in their own ways, for what happened months and years ago.

Jonah knows, also, that part of the reconciliation is on his shoulders. And that it’s not a thing for here, tonight.

Buffy scoffs at TJ’s remark, but Jonah sees that she’s smiling.

“If I spin Jonah, we have to remake the moment in the Red Rooster,” Andi says, and Jonah blinks in surprise.

“So we’ll have to do it awkwardly with everyone watching?”

Andi chucks a pillow at him, and Jonah lets out a breath like a laugh. He’s glad, then, that they can joke like this.

“Actually,” Amber says, with a realization, “three people in this room have had their first kiss.”

“Four,” Cyrus interrupts, frowning. “I had—I mean, Iris kissed me.”

TJ shifts in his seat.

“Wait a minute,” Buffy says, sitting up from her laid back position. “Raise your hand if you’ve had your first kiss.

Jonah and Andi are the first to place their hands in the air. Then Cyrus, following his prior statement. Then—TJ?

Buffy and Amber are left with their hands down and mouths working. But Jonah looks over at TJ, thinking about how he’s never had a girlfriend. Never had a boyfriend, either.

“TJ?” Andi says, as if reading Jonah’s mind.

He shrugs and leans back. Amber glances over at—Jonah, of all people, but then shakes her head.

“Okay, well, we’re still not doing lips. Not unless you both want to.”

Cyrus nods in assent, and it’s decided.

Jonah is so close to Buffy. And he’s holding his breath. He doesn’t know if he wants her to spin him or not, him to spin her or not, for the two of them to end up facing each other in a Kippen closet. Because Jonah doesn’t want to also have to face an awful truth that might exist: that Buffy would never, ever like him.

Buffy bumps his shoulder, and he bumps back, heartbeat fluttering. There’s cookies and lights and singing, and then there is Buffy’s shoulder brushing his. Two different planes of existence.

“I’ll spin first!” Andi calls out, breaking the silence. Jonah sees the last glance she gives Amber, ripe with something in the curve of her eyebrows and quirk of her mouth. Then she steps to the bottle, grips the neck, and spins it around and around and around and—

When it stops, it’s pointing directly at him.

 

—

 

Buffy watches her best friend spin the boy sitting next to her, and she manages to maintain her calm. Andi and Jonah—old news. Jonah hitches a breath, shakes his head, then leans over and lets Andi peck his cheek. It’s too much like the first Red Rooster kiss, feeling anticlimactic yet so exposed. When Jonah sits back, he doesn’t look at Buffy.

Buffy, who doesn’t blush, as a rule, can feel her face turning red.

“Okay, then. Next?” Amber says, nodding in Jonah’s direction. Buffy eyes the bottle intently, as he tips it around in a circle. She wonders, for a moment, if Andi and Jonah would kiss in the closet if he spun it back around to Andi.

Common sense, for once, cuts into her mind and reminds her of a simple fact: Andi is head over heels for Amber. Jonah is—

Well, Jonah is a question mark.

In the split second while Buffy considers all of this, the bottle swings nearly 360 degrees and lands, with no hesitation, facing her.

“Lovebirds!” TJ calls out, but Buffy doesn’t hear him. Her heart is beating too fast.

Jonah, who looks only slightly ruffled, leans in, and, quick as a feather or a snowflake, dusts her cheek with a kiss. It takes Buffy longer than half a second to jerk away at the unexpectedness. Then, because she’s tired of being ashamed, she turns to meet Jonah’s eyes.

“Next time, warn me before you lean in, okay?”

 _Next time_.

Buffy doesn’t know why she says it, except she definitely knows why she says it.

“Whatever you say, Slayer,” Jonah says, a beat too late, and nudges her shoulder.

It feels like a moment. It feels like something.

While Amber pushes the bottle over toward her, Buffy replays several things in her head all at once:  
_One:_ the day she met Jonah Beck. It was before Andi and the Good Hair Crew all latched onto him. It was before frisbee lessons with Bex and bracelets and all of that. Buffy had been walking home from Jefferson, crossing the fields where the Space Otters were practicing. A younger version of the Jonah next to her now had thrown a frisbee at her feet, eyebrows enticing. Sharp and suspicious and so very Buffy-like, she had picked it up and turned it over in her hands. Jonah finally reached out to take it, and she pulled it back, then threw it over his head to the girl behind him, who caught it squarely in her hands. “Jonah,” he said, then, and she nodded. It wasn’t until Andi introduced them later, and their paths crossed truly, that she lent him back her name. And it wasn’t until months later, when the trust was real between them, that she gave her name to him, to have and share and keep as friends.

 _Two:_ the day Marty almost kissed her. It was like clockwork at that point: Buffy flopped down on the futon in Marty’s room, unlaced her running shoes, and started on her physics homework. Marty spun around in his chair, tapping a pen against his chin, and attempted math homework while actually looking up runners on _milesplit.com_. It had been a Tuesday, that much she remembered. She asked Marty to come help her with something, and he trailed over, with tired eyes. They were sitting next to her, and Buffy felt something like a warm energy swelling inside her. She had _liked_ Marty: ferociously, confidently, after their middle school falling out, for almost all of ninth grade. She couldn’t deny it, any more than she could deny the way her heartbeat skipped when Jonah’s kissed her cheek. But back then—she wasn’t ready, even then, to kiss anyone. It was hard to know if she ever would be—sure, kisses on cheek and holding hands and arms around each other were all wonderful. But a kiss, on the lips? When Marty leaned in, Buffy’s heart skipped, but not in a good way. She felt something essential break between them, just as she had two years earlier when Marty left her on the bridge. And it couldn’t be the same again, and it wasn’t.

 _Three_ : the feeling in her stomach moments ago when Jonah pecked her on the cheek. Bumped her arm. Carried her on his shoulders so she could throw glittery pieces of paper at the ceiling. Days ago, ate baby taters in the booth across from her. She doesn’t need to explain it any more; it’s there.

It’s there, and he bumped her shoulder.

Buffy spins the bottle, and, because the world is just _like that_ , it lands on the person sitting nearly directly across from her: TJ Kippen.

“Nope.”  
“It’s the rules of the game,” Andi says, holding back a laugh.

“If you think I’m going to kiss TJ Kippen,” Buffy announces, standing up in her seat, “then you’ve got—ah—“  
Buffy stops when TJ himself gets up, runs over, jumps on the couch, and pecks her on the cheek, all in about two seconds, looking annoyingly pleased with himself. TJ shakes his head once he does it, and Buffy gags, fake retching over the side of the couch. She doesn’t look down at Jonah’s face—she’s not sure she wants to see it.

“Gross!” she yells at TJ’s retreating figure, back over to Cyrus, who gives him a tentative high five.

“Not as gross as you!”

“You’re the one who _kissed_ me!”  
“Well were you going to do it?”  
“No!”

“Settle down,” Amber says, grinning. She glances at Andi; so much of their conversation seems to be in exchanges like that, small looks and knowing eyes. Buffy notices; how could she not?

“Nope. I need to go wash my mouth out,” Buffy insists, hopping off the couch.

“We didn’t even—“ TJ protests. Buffy throws him a look, and runs off to the sink.

 

—

 

The tint of pinpoint lights and the sparkle of the snow outside the window are starting to hurt Cyrus’s eyes. Otherwise in the dark, he’s snuggled in the couch next to TJ, neither of them saying much. He keeps replaying the moment in his head, over and over: a pinky linked to his, two palms against each other, fingers interlocked. He keeps going back to how TJ was the one who curled his pinky over Cyrus’s, how TJ was the one whose heartbeat he felt beating in sync with his in the contact of their wrists.

Now, they sit only inches apart, but their hands are separate.

He wishes he could know what TJ is thinking right now. He wishes he knew what _he_ is thinking right now. Feelings, Cyrus has learned, are difficult.

Actually, difficult is a poor way to put it. It’s something more than difficult to know someone for three years, to know them _well_ for two, and to have feelings for approximately two—maybe more, maybe less. It’s impossible, almost, to hang out and sleepover and talk and text for hours and _hold hands_ with the boy he’s so desperately enamored with, and to never say the words out loud. To Buffy and Andi, who spill back about their crushes (well, Buffy doesn’t, but Cyrus figures she’s figuring out how to manage the past with Marty and the future with Jonah), to them it’s easy. But he doesn’t know how he’ll ever say it out loud to TJ. Or if he ever wants to.

“Earth to Cyrus!” Andi says, and he’s back in the land of the living. “You’ve been spun.”  
Cyrus nods, sleepily, then glances down at the bottle. Pointing at him, accusingly. He glances up, counts off in his head what’s occurred so far. Then—

_Crap._

TJ Kippen is looking over at him, uneasily. Everyone else is smiling at them, but Cyrus can’t see them. He sees TJ, who doesn’t seem to know what to do. It feels like he’s nervous, which can’t possibly be true—he just kissed Buffy Driscoll with apparently no regard for his own life. But he’s hesitating now.

Every time something happens that might just means TJ could possibly like him, Cyrus feels his heart smiling inside.

“Go on,” someone whispers across the circle. And so TJ does, and Cyrus’s shoulders bristle and his mind goes blank and his stomach fills with violently present butterflies and TJ kisses him about two inches from his lips.

And Cyrus, who was trying to maintain calm, feels a supernova explode from that point. A small one, but a supernova nonetheless. It’s the sting of the nerves and the warmth of his skin that reminds him (as if he didn’t know already) that this is something he likes, that this boy in front of him is cute and attractive and magnetic.

Cyrus is the one to pull away, because his erratic breathing is giving him away. (In the back of his head, he thinks: _and that was only on the cheek_.) But he puts that thought away, and falls back, breathless next to TJ, who looks a little sick and a lot happy.

He misses the knowing look between Andi and Buffy, as if they’re his wingwomen, and the smile Amber gives Jonah, because all of them ship this more than anything. Cyrus misses it, because he’s thinking about TJ.

He wants to say something, but what is there to say? So he doesn’t, just silently takes the bottle in his hand and pauses only a moment before giving it a half-hearted spin.

Bowie Quinn, Cyrus thinks, as the bottle slows to a stop, is right about the universe.

The cap is directed, irrefutably, toward the only one in the room Cyrus was afraid he would spin.

“Closet!” Buffy yells, and Cyrus thinks of the irony of it.

Everything’s almost like a dream: the fairy lights, Andi’s encouraging smile, TJ getting to his feet and stumbling over to the closet, followed by Cyrus. Everything’s a haze, because this is not what Cyrus thought would happen tonight—just the two of them, alone in a closet. A closet!  
Cyrus nearly doesn’t make it the door. It’s not an overstatement to say his vision might be a little blurry. Or maybe that’s the dark.

When they both go in the closet and shut the door, it’s still dark.

Cyrus doesn’t allow himself to think it too loudly, but he’s _hoping._

 

_—_

 

TJ’s mind short-circuited when he kissed Cyrus’s cheek. TJ’s mind short-circuited on his math final only days ago. TJ’s mind stopped functioning for a moment when the Jefferson girls’ basketball team won the championship last year, and Buffy Driscoll actually gave his broken-ACL-crutches self a _hug_.

He’s thanking his lucky stars that somehow, his mind is working right now.

Cyrus’s cheeks are still a little red, and TJ knows his are too, especially after the second spin. They walk to the closet, around the corner and out of sight of the rest of everyone.

“I guess we’re the lucky ones, huh?” TJ says, holding the closet door open for Cyrus, who nods but doesn’t say anything in return. Once the door swings shut, they’re left in utter darkness. TJ swears softly and fumbles around the walls, searching for the switch. It’s his house—he really should know where the closet light is. But it’s Cyrus who finds it, tugging on a string suspended from the ceiling and gazing over at TJ with dark eyes.

TJ wants, and he wants, and he wants. He wants with his eyes open and shut and when Cyrus looks over at him he almost kisses him then and there.

But the two of them settle across from each other in the crowded closet, on opposite sides. TJ picks a spot on the wall just above Cyrus to rest his eyes.

Silence flickers for a moment before Cyrus shuffles and crosses the room to stand next to him. Cyrus, ever the brave one, always the strong one. TJ is so proud; there’s not a drop of jealousy left in him. There used to be, back in middle school, when Cyrus had both Buffy and Andi and TJ had no one except maybe Reed. But it’s all gone.

The light above them blinks, and in the space between darkness and light, TJ’s hand ends up pressed against Cyrus’s. He doesn’t know how it happens, but it does. Like earlier, their hands intertwine, pressed together, and pull their sides against each other. TJ feels his breathing go shallow. When was the moment that Cyrus could first make him breathless? Maybe at the swings that second time. Maybe when he went to Cyrus’s house and they sat, inches apart, watching made-for-tv movies last winter. Maybe every time they almost held hands, and the twice now that they truly have. And still are.

Minutes stack on top of each other and pile up, and TJ begins to realize he may be running out of time. For what? He can’t exactly shape his intentions in his mind. But he knows.

After what seems like an eternity, Cyrus’s hand twitches in his, and TJ decides he can’t keep waiting, just like when he first pushed his hand into Cyrus’s. He swings around, looking over at Cyrus, who looks back, almost afraid.

Their faces are nearly touching, illuminated in the dusty closet light and opposites in a photographic negative.

“TJ,” Cyrus says, so delicately, like he could break the word with too much force. TJ’s heart is flickering, fluttering, existing. “Did you—did you want to do seven minutes in heaven?”

TJ sees the question break his face, sees Cyrus begin to ask himself why he said it. But TJ, again, sees the bravery splayed across his nervous mouth and endless eyes. His heartbeat hammers in his chest; it wants out.

He squeezes Cyrus’s hand, and it’s warm. “Only with you.”

It feels like the bravest thing he’s ever said.

It feels like the heartbeat in Cyrus’s wrist is screaming against his.

It feels like something he was missing is almost, almost there.

He sees Cyrus smile, and he sees the hand in his move upwards as the body attached to it shifts towards him. Instinctively, he closes his eyes.

It’s Cyrus who pulled him out of the dark, when his parents and his friends and the awfulness inside him were drowning him and he couldn’t breathe. It’s Cyrus who listened, who _listened_ and was there for him always and ever. It’s Cyrus who held him while he choked on tears in ninth grade, having discovered his knee no longer wanted to function as a knee for nine months. It’s Cyrus who knows the stories of his parents and his grandparents and his sister and his loneliness. It’s Cyrus who reached out and took that loneliness from him. It’s Cyrus who matters. And it’s Cyrus, then, who pushes the last few inches—they’re so _close_ —and breathes into reality what was meant to be all this time.

It’s Cyrus who grips TJ’s hand and kisses him, sweet and simple, all at once.

In less than a second, Cyrus pulls back, and he’s still close enough that TJ can feel his measured breath and taste the anxiousness. His brows are drawn together, dark eyes worried, as if he’s made a mistake.

TJ wants that look gone from Cyrus’s face.

He lets go of Cyrus’s hand and wraps his arms around him, embracing him tightly as Cyrus finally relaxes. He holds him, he holds him, he holds him, like the world is new and this is all he knows. He holds Cyrus like it’s been three years in the making, because it has.

Cyrus is crying, crying and breathing: exhaling, finally. And eventually TJ pulls back from the embrace, only because he has something else he needs to do. Cyrus rubs his eyes, still gazing up at TJ, waiting for one of them to say something.

TJ doesn’t have anything to say, now. But he crosses the distance between them once again, because he needs to, because he wants to. And this time, when they kiss, no one pulls away.

It’s muffins and it’s swings and it’s somersaults and it’s hidden smiles and it’s long phone calls and it’s happiness, happiness, happiness.

 

—

 

Amber is still laughing, watching TJ and Cyrus follow each other, mesmerized, into the closet. But everyone else looks on in wonder and maybe jealousy, wishing for _something._ Amber wants _something_ too, but she doesn’t want to allow herself to think about it.

“What do we do now?” Andi asks finally. “It’s no one’s turn.”

“You can spin,” Amber interrupts, running a hand through her hair. “I’ll just assume we won’t get either of them out of there for a while.”

“Should we set a timer, though?” Jonah asks, already reaching for his phone. Amber shrugs and so Jonah sets it anyway, the seconds ticking away.

Andi picks up the bottle, tosses it around in her hands a few times, much to Buffy’s chagrin. Then she drops it on the table, spinning it quickly and delicately. Amber watches Andi’s hands tip the bottle, almost like she’s piecing together the parts of a puzzle or a craft. And she watches Andi’s spin push the bottle around seven times until it ends up, somehow unsurprisingly, pointing at Amber.

Amber has come to expect this. She thinks of their moment in the kitchen, hours ago, and wonders if Andi will even remember it tomorrow. She thinks about how Andi kissed Jonah so easily. She lets her own insecurity wash over her, because it’s almost easier than thinking the possibility she hopes for could be true.

“Pucker up,” Andi says jokingly, and Amber considers how bold Andi has become in the past year. Part of Amber thinks it’s her own fault (not that she minds the change).

Andi leans over, grinning, and kisses Amber on the cheek. It lasts half a second longer than the rest of the kisses, but it’s hard for Amber to think anything of it. Not when Andi does it so casually, and flourishes her movements after the fact, grinning. It’s even harder for Amber to imagine that Andi could kiss someone she had romantic feelings for like it’s nothing.

And Amber has seen this before: it’s the air that gay girls breathe. Friendships so deep they might as well be romances, but to one half of the pairing, they could never be. Texting late into the night, sharing anything and everything, even holding hands. Amber doesn’t want that to be what’s between her and Andi; she really, desperately doesn’t. But she thinks of the unspoken jokes between them, of text threads that extend into tomorrow.

And she takes the bottle, not wanting to let herself keep thinking.

“Hey Amber,” Buffy says suddenly. “Remember when Cyrus forced us to have a therapy session to reconcile?”

Amber winces, because memories of that come with memories of things she and Andi have already put behind them: ferris wheels and marker hearts and hatred.

“Yeah, I remember. We hated each other,” she responds carefully. Beside her, Andi studies the couch, contemplating.

“I’m sorry,” Buffy says, all too suddenly again. “For hating you for no reason.”

It’s the strangest apology, out of place and in the wrong time. They’ve made up dozens of times before, or they wouldn’t be here, in the same house, about to have a sleepover.

And yet.

“I’m sorry,” Amber says, softer than she’s ever said most anything. “I was awful, and I should’ve been better.”

Andi is looking directly at Jonah, unable to take a side in this. So Amber keeps her gaze locked on Buffy’s, who looks—gentler. More open.

“I just wanted to say it,” Buffy says, “so we can finally, finally move on.”

Amber smiles, then. “Look at us. Cyrus had to bring us in for relationship therapy and now we’re all helping him and TJ—“

“Hang out,” Jonah cuts in, with a grin. Amber imagines if her brother were here, the reconciliation might finally be complete: Buffy and TJ, TJ and Jonah, Jonah and Amber, Amber and Buffy. But TJ’s not here, and that’s okay. It’s enough to know that Andi’s best friend—that _Buffy_ —forgives her. That she wants to move on.

“Time to spin the bottle?” Buffy asks, hopefully. Amber is struck, suddenly, with how the spiky outer shell of middle-school Buffy has softened into kindness and strength.

“You got it.” Amber drops the bottle in the middle and spins it. And spins it and spins it until:

“I guess we really are throwing it back,” Andi laughs, the first word she’s spoken in a few minutes. The bottle declares her destiny, with no regrets: Jonah Beck.

Jonah Beck: the only boy to ever catch Amber Kippen’s eye. Jonah Beck: a question mark. Jonah Beck: certainly not who she wanted to be kissing tonight.

Still, Amber leans across Buffy to peck Jonah on the cheek. She wants it to be nothing, but she also wants it to be something final. Something Andi can see and know: the past is past. All of it.

As Amber leans back, and Jonah makes no expression at all, Amber thinks about how things from so long ago still affect them today. She doesn’t want eighth grade Amber, the one who was struggling so badly with her parents that she lashed out at everyone around her, to be the one they all remember. The one who comes to mind. And she’s been trying to erase that version of herself for so long—over two years.

It’s worn out and cliche, but Amber’s so tired of being the mean girl. She wonders if apologizing to Buffy and kissing Jonah Beck is enough. She wonders if anything will ever be enough.

“My turn,” Jonah says hurriedly, cutting the silence. He spins it again, and lands on—surprise, surprise—Buffy.

Amber’s suspected the both of them for long enough, and as they go off into the closet, Andi also wears a smug smile. And then it’s just the two of them: Amber and Andi. Isn’t it always?

Moments after Jonah and Buffy leave, the timer on Buffy’s phone goes off, signifying the end of TJ and Cyrus’s seven minutes. Andi gives Amber a look that asks: _are you going to go get them?_ Amber gives her back a look that says: _no, are you crazy?_ Andi deactivates the alarm in agreement. 

“How do you think they’re doing?” Amber asks out loud.

“Honestly? Thriving,” Andi says. “I hope Jonah and Buffy are too.” There’s something unspoken there: the last two left.

“And us?” Amber asks.

“Tired,” Andi admits. “Drained from finals. Full of peanut butter sandwiches and cinnamon cookies.”

“Tired?” Amber says, like it’s a shock. “It’s only about ten thirty, and you never sleep…”

“I never sleep,” Andi agrees. “But suddenly I feel like I could sleep for days. Maybe it was the snow this morning.”

“Mayhaps someone made too many snow angels?” Amber asks.

“Mayhaps _someone_ threw about a hundred snowballs at me.”

Amber reaches up and swats at one of the stray strings of light above their heads. “How long do you think the snow’s going to last?”

“Bex and I have decided two days at the most. Enough time to go to the alpine slide.”

“The alpine slide?? In the snow?”

“Just a little tradition I have with my parents. Buffy, Cyrus, and I used to go in the fall but we haven’t since… a certain disaster.”

Andi leans back on Amber’s shoulder. “You know, spin the bottle doesn’t make much sense if everyone ends up in the closet at once—wait a minute, which closet did Jonah and Buffy go in? If TJ and Cyrus are in the other ones?”

Amber shrugs. “The second dimension one. They’re actually both in the same closet at once, but in different metaphysical spaces.”

Turning around to look directly at Amber, inches away from her nose, Andi narrows her eyes. “Either you’re on drugs or you’re a nerd.”  
Amber stretches back: anything to get away from Andi’s very present bright eyes and tiny smile. “TJ’s the nerd, not me.”  
“Drugs it is, then.”

“You got me,” Amber mumbles, fading off. And then, like a scene from a dream, Andi reaches up and twirls a strand of Amber’s hair between her fingers, eyes half-lidded.

“I _am_ tired,” Andi asserts. Amber keeps holding her breath.

“If you fall asleep on me, I’ll draw a mustache on your face,” Amber teases, and Andi stops twirling her hair, turns around and tilts her chin up so she’s staring right at Amber.

“If you draw a mustache on my face, I’ll…” Andi, for once, comes up short of words.

“You’ll what?” Amber asks, smiling. If Andi can flirt like it’s nothing, then so can she. She winks down at Andi. “Throw snowballs at me?”

Andi sighs and rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning too. “No, I’ll—I’ll put snow in your sleeping bag. There.”

“You’ll craft me to death?” Amber continues, ignoring Andi’s remark.

“Hey! You’ve already seen my baking skills, which include wielding a large wooden spoon. Don’t test me.”Andi scrambles up to sit, legs tucked beneath her, and positions herself about two inches from Amber’s nose. “Draw the mustache, get the spoon.”  
“Hm. I seem to remember a very different course of events involving the spoon than you do. As in, I took yours and cornered you.” Amber moves a centimeter closer to Andi, lets herself breathe. She can do this. She can keep up.

“As in, you have the home field advantage right now. If we were at _my_ apartment, I could best you in wooden spoon dueling any day.”

“I guess I’ll just have to take you up on that offer,” Amber says.

“I guess you will. Although,” she continues, “I seriously doubt that all six of us could fit in my room to sleepover. Or even a huge pillow fort. So it would have to be just the two of us.”

“Would your parents even let you have boys over to sleepover?” Amber asks. She doesn’t know why she says it. It sounds useless in the air.

“I don’t know—“ Andi says, then cuts off. She relaxes back against the couch, and it occurs to Amber that they never set a timer for Jonah and Buffy. But she doesn’t want to remind Andi of that, because she’s having too much fun now: exchanging words, laughing, being as close as possible without truly touching.

Which is why it’s so surprising when Andi, out of nowhere, muffles a sob.

She’s still leaning back against the couch, chin pointed upward and throat exposed to the ceiling. Amber can see the beginning of tears forming in her eyes. _Fuck._ Had Amber made her cry?  
“Andi?”

She shakes her head and turns away, wiping the tear from her eye.

“Andi?” Amber repeats, and reaches out a hand for her friend. Her _friend_ , who needs her help right now, not hopeless pining.

Andi turns around and grips Amber’s hand in her own, breathing fast. It’s all so sudden. Amber wants to reach out and tuck back the strand of dark hair that has fallen in front of Andi’s eyes. But she doesn’t. Instead, she says: “Is this—is this about Buffy and Jonah and TJ and all of us?”

Offering a sad laugh, Andi shakes her head. “No, not at all. You guys are all making up finally—it’s amazing. I want it to be forever.”

“I don’t know about _forever—_ “

“Amber, wait,” Andi interrupts. “I wanted to apologize to you. For—“

“For what? Middle school things? I’m the one who should be apologizing; I’m sorry—I am—“

“No!” Andi says, and the word is full of tears. “I want to apologize for—for—“

Andi cuts herself off, not once, but twice. She shakes her head, rubs her eyes, squeezes Amber’s hand which is miraculously still holding Andi’s.

“Andi?” Amber says, so soft that the word could be a feather.

“I have something. Something that I’ve wanted to tell you, for so, _so_ long. And it sits on the tip of my tongue every time I have a conversation, especially with you, but I bury it inside, and I just can’t live with myself anymore because I need to tell you so _bad_ , Amber. I need to. And I couldn’t sit here and laugh and talk anymore because I need to say it like I need air to breathe.”

The room, for once, is silent.

“I don’t know how to say it,” Andi says, so quiet Amber almost doesn’t hear.

Amber waits.

“I—“

Seconds tick off: one, two, three. The same measure as Amber’s heartbeats.

“Amber,” Andi whispers. “I’m bisexual.”

And now she’s crying. And now they’re both crying. And now Amber can’t see anything, can’t think anything except this: _i love her i love her i love her i love her she’s crying she’s crying._

And now Amber takes Andi’s other hand, and says: “Andi. Andi. Andi, you are the most amazing, bravest person I know. Thank you for telling— _thank you_ , Andi—I love you—“

Amber hugs her, and Andi stays limp for one moment, in shock, before she hugs back, and their tears mix, and she rest her exhausted eyelids on Amber’s shoulder.

“That’s what I was trying to say,” Andi says, quietly. “I’m so _tired_ of pretending to be someone I’m not, only because I haven’t said two words out loud. It feels like lying.”

“It’s not fair,” Amber says back, immediately, because she knows _exactly_ how Andi feels, what it means to have a piece of her that she has to show the world, or else she’s living a lie.

“It’s not fair,” Andi echoes, and Amber wants so badly right now to tell her that she’s not alone. She needs to. A glance around the room tells her that the other four are still in their respective closets (fuck, that’s symbolic), and that Buffy’s water bottle rests, forgotten, on the table.

“Come on,” Amber whispers, keeping her right hand firmly in Andi’s. “Let’s—um—let’s go upstairs.” It’s the only way she’ll be able to get it out, if the two of them are alone. And she wants to. She wants to so bad, to reciprocate it and be able to exhale. Andi has finally given her the bravery to do it. (And why wouldn’t it be Andi, the first girl Amber ever truly fell for, and the strongest person Amber knows, who gave her enough strength to say the words herself?)

And so they scramble up the stairs, tears still falling and hands permanently entangled. Amber’s room is dimly lit, with snow on the windowpanes. She flips on the lamp and falls onto the bed, holding her breath. She wants to let it out so bad.

Andi tumbles down next to her, eyes unseeing, probably still processing what she’s said out loud.

“Andi,” Amber says quietly, just like she said moments earlier. Andi turns to face her.

_Just say the words. Just say them. Just do it._

A balancing, a gift, a secret. Amber wants Andi to understand she’s not alone, she never will be, she’s so love and loved and _loved._

Again: “Andi.”

Neither of them are looking anywhere in particular now. Amber thinks: _she’s so brave._ Amber thinks: _it’s time to stop being miserable. And to start being brave._

Then Amber stops thinking, and she speaks.

“I’m also—I mean—I don’t know if I’m bi—I like girls, oh my god I can’t believe I just said that. I like girls. So I’m gay, or something. I don’t know if I like boys, I don’t really know, I might—“

Andi is crashing into her before the rambling sentence can end. The second embrace is just like the first one, only better, because they’ve both said it. They’ve both said it.

 _They’ve_ both _said it._

Andi is bisexual. Her crush is bisexual!—Amber thinks, while crying into Andi’s shoulder, with reckless happiness. It’s not impossible—it’s not.

And then the tears keep coming.

It’s almost like that first night they held hands, because their fingers are still locked tightly together. But this time, they both fall back onto the bed, and they breathe, they breathe, they breathe. No more withholding breath like it’s a tangible thing— _well,_ Amber thinks, _not until the worry about whether or not she likes me settles in, and the coming out to other people, and the distress about when and who and where._ But they made it. They both did.

Amber uses her palm to wipe away Andi’s tears, and Andi does the same. And they lay back against Amber’s comforter, all the words used up.

Here they are: alive and ecstatic and apprehensive but so very free.

 

—

 

When Buffy spins the bottle, it twirls back around, once, twice, then lands where it should, at a 180 degree angle right toward the boy next to her, because how could it not?

Andi gives her an approving smile and Buffy imagines and hopes Cyrus would give her a twin blessing. And so the two of them—Buffy and Jonah, Jonah and Buffy—stumble off to the closet, their hearts skipping beats in sync.

Buffy already has her hand on the doorknob to the first closet she sees before Jonah lets out a little gasp and grabs her wrist. “Not that one,” he whispers, nodding to the door. Buffy frowns, then remembers.

“I almost just walked in on TJ Kippen and my best friend,” Buffy snorts, pulling back her arm.

“Not good,” Jonah says softly. “Want to find another closet?”

“I suppose,” Buffy says, twirling in a circle. Maybe it’s the night, maybe it’s the darkness of the Kippen basement hallways. But Buffy slides her wrist out from Jonah’s hand and instead places her palm in his. Two hands, flat against each other, cupped together, and she drags him to the closet at the end of the hallway, which is, incidentally, about two feet wide and filled with books.

“Can we fit?” Jonah whispers.

“We can make it work.” Buffy pulls him into the closet, and his fingers flicker against the back of her hand. Once he pulls the door shut, and Buffy manages to click on the light switch next to the wall, she can see the dust cascading over every surface. Jonah coughs: once, twice, then grins sheepishly at her in the pale light.

“Allergic to dust?” she asks.

“Allergic to dust.”

“I think I’m allergic to sleep,” Buffy says, leaning on the shelves on the wall. “I haven’t gotten more than six hours in the past three weeks.”

“This _is_ a sleepover, so, were you planning to sleep tonight?”

Buffy laughs sharply, tugging on Jonah’s hand. “Nope.”

“You’re worse than TJ,” Jonah says, squinting.

“Don’t compare me to TJ,” Buffy fires back, almost dropping his hand. Jonah laughs, in that Jonah Beck way: his eyes crinkle and his dimples deepen and he smiles with his teeth. Buffy, who has only ever been able to find a small group of individuals _attractive_ in her entire life, thinks this needs to be added to the list. Thinks Jonah needs to be added to the list.

16-year old Jonah Beck looks like the 13-year old Jonah Beck who first tossed her a frisbee, and he doesn’t. The dimples and eyes are the same; the frame and height are not. Finally, in the end of eighth grade, Jonah shot up and reached her height so she could no longer tease him about being unable to touch the rim of a basketball hoop,or catch frisbees that were thrown too high. Now he still has the shadow of middle school heartthrob Jonah, but he has the essence of the Jonah who had his heart broken by Kira Summers freshman year. Buffy thinks about how she’s known him all this time: skateboards and frisbees and attempted posters for Kira and all of it. She didn’t really start to like him until this calendar year, not until after she and Marty ended up in pieces, and Kira and Jonah were done for good. After that it was movies at Jonah’s house, it was skating down main street and stopping at Karl’s to watch basketball on tv. It was Jonah and Buffy, unattached.

“Hey Buffy,” Jonah says. “Look what book’s behind you.”

Buffy spins around, still gripping Jonah’s hand, and scans the shelves. Her eyes land immediately on the one he wants her to pick out: _Romeo and Juliet_. Between their joint performance in English class of the balcony scene, and Andi’s earlier remark, it feels like a vital piece of their relationship.

“Remember when I fell?” Buffy says, then starts to laugh. She had been attempting to stand on top of a desk and emulate Juliet’s stance, but the legs had wobbled too much underneath her and she had tumbled directly on top of Jonah.

“How could I forget? I was only permanently scarred by your nails scratching me.”  
“It was just payback for that one time you skated into me.”

Jonah laughs, shrugging, then pulls her back from the shelf so they’re facing. And Buffy doesn’t want to wait anymore.

“Jonah, do you have a crush?”

A beat.

“Um. Yes.” A second pause, then: “Someone at the sleepover.”

Buffy inhales, then curses herself for it, because she’s showing her hand. She wants so badly for Jonah to say it’s her, but she’s already running through all of the other people it could be: Andi, Amber—he denied it before, but still. Maybe it’s TJ or Cyrus. Buffy doesn’t know.

Their hands are still entangled tightly together, but neither of them seems to realize it. Instead, Buffy scoots a tiny bit closer to Jonah, and asks:

“Andi?”

He shakes his head. “I’ve made my peace with that, believe me.”

“Amber?”

Jonah laughs. “Didn’t I already explain this?”

 _Then who?_ Buffy doesn’t dare to hope.

“Is it… TJ? Cyrus?”

Jonah shakes his head to both names, and Buffy notices the way his lips inflect at the mention of boys’ names: not like he’s surprised, like he’s resigned. Another story for another time.

He tightens his hold on her hand, and twists the hairband on her wrist. Buffy’s waiting, waiting, waiting, just like she has for years, through Andi and Libby and Kira. She wasn’t waiting for Jonah, at first, but she was waiting for this moment.

“Jonah,” she says carefully. He flicks up his green-blue eyes at her, captured under thin eyelashes. He’s so _nice_ to look at, so considerate and talented and stupid, sometimes. “Is it—is it—me?”

She half closes her eyes, preparing to wince. But that’s only a reflex, because she’s Buffy Driscoll. Buffy _Driscoll_ , and she knows they’re meant to be here, in the closet, in the dying light. She knows what the answer is, in a very Han-Solo-type way.

“Um.”

Pause.

“Yes.”

Buffy laughs, and it’s in the confession that she sees Jonah’s vulnerability. So she squeezes his hand, and says this:

“Well, that’s good. Considering I like you too.” His eyes go wide.

“I—really?”

“Really, Jonah Beck. I really do.”

Jonah stares in amazement, and Buffy stares right back, smiling, because finally, finally, finally.

They’re still holding hands a couple minutes later when Buffy yawns, closing her eyes. “You hungry? Up for an almost midnight snack?”

“Always,” Jonah Beck says, and pulls her out the door, swinging hands and laughing in the dark.

 

—

 

Cyrus thinks he understands now what it means to be glowing. He and TJ are still sitting in the closet, talking about who knows what. He keeps looking at TJ’s smile, and thinking: he’s part of the reason for that smile. And then Cyrus smiles, and TJ laughs, and they both glow.

Eventually, TJ tilts his head to the side and asks, “Wanna get some food? PB and J didn’t exactly cut it.”

“Muffins?” Cyrus says hopefully.

“Chocolate chocolate chip!” TJ shouts, then laughs. Cyrus shakes his head.

“Do you think they make lemon-flavored muffins?”

TJ drops Cyrus’s hand and gapes at him. “Please tell me you’re joking.”  
“I’m not! They would be good!”

“Lemons are sour!” TJ insists.

Cyrus can’t resist it. “Like you?”

TJ just shakes his head. “I like to think I’m sweet—wait no, _you’re_ sweet.”

“That’s sappy.”  
“So are you!”

“Muffins it is!” Cyrus declares, and grabs TJ’s hand. They scramble into the hallway, then TJ, grinning wickedly, presses his back to the wall.

“Got to be stealthy,” he whispers, and shuffles quietly to where the wall ends, dragging Cyrus with him.

“Wait—what about everyone else?” Cyrus says nodding towards the corner. TJ puts his ear to the wall, biting his lip as he listens. Then he shakes his head.

“There’s no one there.”  
“Huh. Weird.” Cyrus shrugs and follows TJ into the living room, where, sure enough: no one is there. The strings of light twinkle, alone, in the empty room. A few cookies sit forgotten on a tray thrown to the side, and the couch’s pillows are scattered across the ground.

“Where do you think they went?” TJ asks.

“I don’t know. We might have just ended the spin the bottle game, considering we broke the rules.”  
“Did we?” TJ asks, eyebrows raised. “Or did we just make it more interesting?”  
“We were in that closet for more than seven minutes,” Cyrus says, “but I see your point.”  
“Personally, my money is on Jonah and your girl ending up together,” TJ says. “Just an inkling.”

“Buffy?” Cyrus asks, already laughing.

“No—Andi. Of course Buffy. Did you see their flirting earlier?”

“Yup. I’ve got eyes. I believe it. Now onto the muffins!” Cyrus pulls TJ into the little basement kitchen, only to see:  
Jonah looking guiltily over at them, with his free hand dipping a cracker into a peanut butter jar, and his other hand clutching Buffy’s. Buffy, on the other hand, raises her eyebrows at the two of them, a challenge, and Cyrus can see the cookie crumbs on her lips.

“Fuck,” TJ says, but he’s grinning.

Then he whispers, “I told you so,” to Cyrus.

While Jonah slowly takes the cracker out of the jar and puts it into his mouth, it occurs to Cyrus that he and TJ are also holding hands.

“Hi,” Buffy says, like it’s in a dream. She looks down at TJ and Cyrus’s hands, eyes dancing with excitement.

“Hi,” Cyrus says back.

“We lost Andi and Amber,” Jonah says, nodding, and exchanges a look with Buffy. Cyrus bites his lip, grinning, and thinking: maybe, all his friends get to be happy tonight. TJ, though, looks lost. Cyrus figures he’ll get it soon.

“How was the rest of spin the bottle?” Cyrus asks.

Buffy chokes on the cup of water she’s drinking. “It was… interesting.” Jonah gives her a little shove, and Cyrus’s eyes go to their intertwined hands.

“Well,” TJ says, “that’s all great. But we need muffins.”

“Be my guest,” Jonah says, gesturing to the fridge. TJ squints at him.

“This is my house.”

“And I’m eternally grateful for—ah—“ Buffy shoves Jonah, and he looks back over at TJ. “Sorry. The muffins are in the fridge. We haven’t touched them.”

TJ just tilts his head to the side in that TJ way and reaches past them to take the muffins from the fridge. Buffy bumps Cyrus, who has been pulled along, and mouths a scream of happiness. It comes across like a keyboard smash, and Cyrus smiles back to convey the same emotion for her. They’ve both finally made reality what they’ve wanted for so long.

Once TJ grabs the muffins, he glances one more time over at Jonah. Cyrus considers two pieces of information in his head: TJ and Jonah have been fighting for years. Cyrus used to be head over heels for Jonah.

The second feeling is long gone, though, and, with these two boys in front of him, Cyrus hopes the first is beginning to dissolve as well. Jonah is still important to him, and he doesn’t want TJ and Jonah’s fighting to ever cause problems. Now, in the way Jonah looks at TJ, like he’s full of regret, Cyrus thinks the schism might be almost healed. He knows, though, that it’s not his battle to fight. It’s theirs.

“Have fun!” TJ says brightly, and Cyrus waves behind his shoulder as the two of them run up the stairs. Buffy waves back, smiling kindly, and Jonah just looks on.

Once they’re up the basement stairs and running toward the main staircase, the adrenaline kicks in. Cyrus starts laughing, and then so does TJ, and they somehow make it to TJ’s room before they collapse. TJ falls back on his bed, and Cyrus sprawls on the floor, next to the muffins.

“No lemon,” Cyrus says, as he looks through the flavors.

“Chocolate?” TJ asks, rolling over onto his stomach, and looking down at the plastic container.

“The very same flavor from the first day we met,” Cyrus affirms, and tosses the wrapped chocolate muffin up to TJ. Somehow, TJ’s athletic ability makes up for Cyrus’s horrible throw, and he catches it.

“Remember that?” TJ says, unwrapping the muffin and already starting to split it.

“I do,” Cyrus says. “I do.”

“Tastes good,” TJ announces, with a mouth full of chocolate.

“Not as good as lemon!”

“Stop it with the lemon,” TJ protests, reaching for a pillow to toss down at him.

“The Kippen household pillows are really being abused today.”

TJ shrugs, and hands him the other half of the muffin. “My parents won’t mind. As long as Amber and I clean up.”

“Leave the lights and decorations up, though. They’re pretty,” Cyrus says.

“Yeah I think I will. To preserve the memory, you know?” TJ says. He jumps off the bed, shuffles around in his closet, and pulls out two sleeping bags. His eyebrows raise, like a question.

“Tired already, TJ-no-middle-name-Kippen?” Cyrus says, dubious.

“The J is my middle name, and this is a _sleep_ over. Sleep.” TJ lays out the sleeping bags beside each other, lays back on one of them, and pats the other. Cyrus slips down beside him and scoots closer, sighing. He remembers, then, something he wants to ask about.

Turning on his side to face him, he meets TJ’s eyes. “Hey TJ, when you said you had your first kiss already, um—“  
TJ interrupts him, sensing the awkwardness. “Yeah. It was with Reed last year.”

Cyrus doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t this. He feels his eyebrows go to his forehead. “Middle school watermelon Reed?”

“Yeah. Um. It was at a party, and I wasn’t exactly in the best state of mind. It was once.”

Cyrus nods, processing. “Wow. Interesting first kiss story.”  
“Yeah, well. This is the first one that mattered.” TJ smiles, and a piece of blond hair tracks down in front of his eyes. Cyrus can’t even think anymore, because _TJ Kippen_ just said that about their kiss and he’s right here and he’s smiling and—

 _Yeah,_ Cyrus thinks, _the thing about Reed doesn’t matter at all._

They curl up in the sleeping bags, trying to be warm from TJ’s fan and the waves of cold coming from the window. And they talk and talk and talk. Cyrus thinks: _perfect perfect perfect_ until his mind overloads and is, for once, quiet.

Quiet until, strangely like a horror movie, someone bangs on the door.

TJ sits up, rubbing his eyes, and frowns over at Cyrus.

“Get up, lovebirds!” It’s Andi’s voice. Then Amber knocks down the door, possibly with a kick, and runs over to them.

“What?” Cyrus says, like he just woke up.

“Nope! We’re sleeping downstairs. Bring the sleeping bags,” Amber announces, reaching out a hand for TJ. He takes it and reluctantly stands up, looking between Andi and his sister.

“You’re glowing. What’s going on?” _Glowing._ Cyrus hopes, for Andi’s sake, it means what he thinks it means.

“I never kiss and tell,” Amber says, with narrowed eyes and a tiny grin. Andi doubles over coughing, stands up, and shoves Amber to the side.

“I—what?” TJ gapes at the two of them. Cyrus only stands up, shrugs, and gives TJ a look that says: _you’ll figure it out someday._

“They grow up so fast,” Andi says, smiling at Cyrus and TJ. When Cyrus frowns, Andi shrugs. “We did say we were your mothers earlier.” Laughing, Cyrus gathers up the sleeping bags and throws one of them into TJ’s arms.

“Let’s go, people!” Amber shouts, laughing, and the four of them race and tumble down the stairs toward the basement. Andi nearly trips on the fourth step down, but TJ catches her, then pushes her back to her feet with a flourish. Cyrus tosses his sleeping back to the ground below and Amber jumps on top of it, sticks the landing, tosses her hair, and looks back up at them.

“Jonah! Buffy!” Andi shouts. In a split second, the pair appears around the corner, looking only slightly guilty.

“Grab some pillows,” Amber directs Buffy. “TJ, run up to mom’s room and pull down some blankets and comforters. Jonah, you go too,” she orders, a mirror of earlier.

Andi, Amber, and Cyrus go about clearing the space around the couch, and Amber drags the coffee table off to the side. Once the other four return, chaos fills the room, as sleeping bags and pillows are laid on the ground, and other pillow walls are thrown up:  
“Use the ottoman—“  
“No, not that one, it’s too comfortable to be a ceiling—“

“One, two, three… six pillows, okay good—“  
“TJ! Stop flirting with Cyrus!”

“Oh! Throw some fairy lights over the top. And turn off the rest in the room.”

That last comment is Amber, and as her vision takes shape, she holds onto Andi. The pillow fort is decidedly big enough for six people, and though it may collapse sometime during the night, no one seems to care.

“We do make a good team,” Cyrus decides, looking over their creation. “All six of us.”

Across the room, Andi thinks about how three years ago, this sleepover would have been a fever dream. She clutches to the memory of an hour ago, when she and Amber whispered words they each never though they could say aloud to each other. She thinks about every single complex relationship in this room: couples and crushes and ex-crushes and best friends and tentative rivals and mending friendships and twins. She thinks about how they all made it here, today.

They all collapse into the fort together, on knees and elbows and backs. Jonah clicks on the last string of lights, giving them dim brightness to see by.

“Truth or dare?” Amber whispers, and someone throws a pillow at her.

“Goodnight,” Cyrus says quietly, cuddled up somewhere in the middle of TJ and Buffy. He thanks silently in his mind—of all people—Amber, for organizing this, so they can all breathe and share and confess in the same space together. A chorus of goodnights echoes back to him: his friends. His _friends_.

Outside, the snow hasn’t stopped, and it piles down across streets and sidewalks and front yards. While the Kippen house—eventually—sleeps, lights twinkle in the sky, and the night goes on.


End file.
